


His Eyes

by eleanorgreen



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Band Fic, Coming of Age, Friends to Lovers, Friendship/Love, Heartbreak, LGBTQ Themes, Larry Stylinson Is Real, M/M, Romance, Slow Burn, Young Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-25
Updated: 2020-11-26
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:26:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 56,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27716074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eleanorgreen/pseuds/eleanorgreen
Summary: "It was a love song. Jack knew this. They’d put 'Her Eyes' on the album in the hopes that it would outlive them. Couples would use it for their first dance. Prom kings and queens would sway to it. Every generic lyric was another dose of immortality. Jack wasn’t interested in immortality. He considered this in the lines leading up to his solo. He didn’t want to live forever. He just wanted to live now."In 2010, Jack and Leo became bandmates and best friends. Two years later, they fell in love while the canals of Amsterdam reflected their single silhouette. By 2014, the two are torn apart by a fake girlfriend and real insecurity. Now, in 2020, their love still burns, but will those flickering embers be enough to reignite something beautiful but tainted from the start?"His Eyes" is my creative take on the history of One Direction and the relationship between Harry Styles (Jack) and Louis Tomlinson (Leo). The story jumps around in time, spanning from 2010 to 2020 and capturing the full span of an epic ten-year love story.This is my first attempt at long-form fan fiction. I altered names and backstories to help make the characters my own, but this story is wholeheartedly dedicated to Harry and Louis.
Relationships: Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson
Kudos: 13





	1. Spring 2020

Raging wind made the Cliffs of Moher an ideal spot. Jack’s dream involved excessive billowing. Nothing in the frame could be static—he imagined his curls in a halo, whitecaps rolling in the distance, clouds stretched thin against the unfurling atmosphere, grasses prostrated at a generous angle, and, at the center of it all, the dress come to life. 

He hadn’t expected the cold. To get the perfect shot, Jack had to stand on the cliffside for two hours in a sheer lace bodice. Though the skirt of the dress was insulated with layer upon layer of pale blue tulle, the hair on his legs still stood up. His knees still buckled with each biting gust. 

It helped that Olivia was there. In her fur hat and cable knit sweater, she made faces behind the photographer and called jokes into the wind. Though Jack could never piece together the punchlines over the noise, he picked up bits and pieces and let them soothe him through the chill. She looked like a tourist, because that’s what they’d been for the past week in Ireland. They’d come for the photoshoot, really, but Jack called it a vacation. It was the closest he’d gotten to a week off over a year, but there was no such thing as a week off when you were the world’s biggest star. In Liscannor village, they were constantly followed. It was a small town, but Jack sang a concert or two, gave a few interviews, and went through a Sharpie’s worth of autographs. The cliffs were the most sincere part of his work, but they also felt like the most sincere escape from it all. Jack was keenly aware that the photos being taken would be plastered across the world. Still, for a while at least, they were just for him and his sister. 

He’d brought Tess, too, as he did to all his shows and shoots. 

“Are you sure?” he’d asked her when she agreed to stick with him after the band split up. 

“It would be an honor, Jack,” she had said, somehow maintaining a fierce expression through her tears, and not shedding a drop of mascara. 

Now, she looked on with a makeup belt carving a dent into her puffy coat. She gave Jack a thumbs up. When he only managed half a smile, Tess walked over to Olivia and whispered something in her ear. Olivia nodded. 

“Don’t forget to feel it,” his sister shouted with cupped hands, and, for the first time that day, Jack made out every word in a sentence. 

He was wearing a dress. And it wasn’t just any dress. He was wearing a dress designed for a woman, but, God, he’d never felt more destined to be a man before. He ran his hands over the lace straps at the place where they intersected with his tattoos. The fabric didn’t lie flat against his shoulders because of the bulge of his traps, just as his pecs distorted the woven pattern across his chest. In these ways, his muscles had merged with the dress, and the dress merged with the cliffs as the train trailed over the edge and faded into the blue-gray of the sea below. He’d always been uncomfortable with the term “sex symbol,” but here was something he wanted to symbolized—sex, yes, but unfurled into a transformed state, shepherded into a new flowering. 

Jack placed one hand on the small of his back and jutted his chin forward into the wind, but his eyes drifted back toward the three women standing behind the camera. 

He could read Luna’s lips whispering in the photographer’s ear,  _ that’s perfect _ . With her hands in the pockets of a designer trench coat and her sunglasses pulled over her eyes despite the cloudy weather, Luna looked unphased and unsurprised. This was the Jack she’d always known was there. This was  _ it.  _ Olivia’s cheeks were bright red, half from the cold and half from beaming emotion. Tess, meanwhile, was crying. Jack wanted to comfort her but told himself the tears were from the wind because he needed to hold on a while longer. He needed to lean into the brilliant light that was bathing the cliffs where they stood.  _ Behold _ , whispered the wind. 

His petals were unfurling. 


	2. Fall 2011

Before every show, he found refuge in the bathroom. Usually, the walls were concrete, but he turned on the faucet to wash the sound out completely. Jack let the water fill his cupped hands until it overflowed, but he didn't bring them to his face. His bangs are swept carefully across his forehead—an effortless look that took two hours and a hot pink bottle of sweet-smelling hairspray to sculpt. No, he couldn’t get his hair wet, lest it lose its signature curl. That, Tess told him again and again, would be disastrous. She always spoke of Jack’s hair as though it weren’t attached to his head, as though it weren’t even something that belonged to him. Jack’s hair belonged to the people—a faceless mass of ownership and consumption. 

Kyle found Jack staring into his hands like they held the antidote to late-capitalist dread. He looked from Jack to the toilet and back again. His hair, straight and blonde and coiffed, didn’t move an inch. 

“I gotta take a shit.” Kyle’s skinny jeans were already unbuttoned. “And I’m  _ gonna _ shit in the next five seconds, whether you’re in here or not.” 

“Oh my god.” Jack wiped his hands on his shirt on the way out the door. Kyle called out a muffled “thank you,” but Jack was already back in the dressing room. 

“What in God’s good name is on your shirt?” Tess looked on the verge of tears. She had silver bracelets jingling on either wrist and a pen holding her hair up into a lopsided bun. Her oversized cardigan made Jack think of his mother, who was waiting in the audience at that very instant. Jack imagined her fiddling nervously with the VIP badge around her neck. 

“Water, Tess,” he finally consoled Tess. “It’s just water.” There was a coffee stain on her blouse, but Jack decided not to point it out. 

She ignored him, saying, “I need a blow dryer,” to no one imparticular. Still, a young girl in a headset appeared moments later with a blow dryer in hand. “Sit,” said Tess. Jack obeyed. He studied the dressing room reflected in the mirror as she worked on his shirt, he studied every part of it but the foreign figure at its center with the signature curls. 

Kyle was back from the bathroom. He was playing foosball with Ronan. The two had been like brothers from the start—hating each other half the time and inseparable for the rest. Luna, as always, was tapping furiously on her phone, as though solving a stubborn Rubik’s cube. Jack wanted to take the thing out of her hand and smash it. _You’ll be much happier this way_ , he would tell her. _I promise._ Of course, if he did that, the symphony around him, the one Luna conducted, would collapse in an instant. Spencer was doing what all of them should have been doing—vocal warmups. He hit every note in his scales with a smooth precision that always made Jack question his own place in the band. Nothing about Jack’s own voice was smooth or precise, and never could he have imagined hopscotching across pitches in front of his bandmate, potentially revealing the utter ineptitude that surely lurked beneath the surface of his rasping belt. Spencer didn’t have to undergo Tess’s hair torture, as he kept his head buzzed. This was only acceptable because Spencer was black and Tess, as Jack had heard her whisper on the bus one night, “didn’t know shit about that sort of hair.” Spencer reached the height of his range without a single vein twitching beneath his skin. Satisfied, he took a sip of tea, and put in a pair of earbuds. 

And then, in the corner, with his face wedged in a copy of  _ National Geographic _ , was Leo. The magazine was upside-down, but this didn’t surprise Jack. It only made him laugh. Leo looked up at the sound and caught Jack’s eye in the mirror. Something about the fact that they were only locking eyes with each other’s reflection gave Jack the ease to hold Leo’s gaze. It didn’t count this way. This wasn’t a stolen moment. Leo flipped the page around. It was a spread of the Milky Way, a purple and silver web of glimmering threads. There were words in a small white typeface, but Jack couldn’t make them out. Such things, he knew, didn’t matter much to Leo. He was a picture guy. A boy of a thousand words. 

“Dark energy,” said Leo, as though that were explanation enough. The moment the stain disappeared and Tess reached to unplug the blow dryer, Jack was on the couch beside Leo, flipping through an astronomy edition of  _ National Geographic.  _ Leo always stumbled upon strange artifacts while on tour—reading glasses on a chain, a lacrosse ball, newspaper clippings, an old chess set with Revolutionary War pieces. Now, with Jack pressed against his shoulder, Leo pointed to white dwarfs and close ups of Jupiter’s spot as though this were his field of expertise, as though the two of them were planning on finishing high school and going off to college to study equations and look through telescopes. 

“Five minutes!” someone called from the doorway, and the room erupted from thunderstorm to hurricane. Luna took the magazine from Leo’s hands and slipped it into her purse. There was nothing tying them together now. Jack looked down at the space between their couch cushions and then back up at Luna. When she smiled down at them, Jack noticed that her lipstick didn’t reach the corners of her mouth. 

“You’ll be great tonight, boys.” She always spoke to them this way—not asking or wishing, but stating, willing her ideal reality into existence. 

Leo smiled back, wide and exaggerated. “You too, Loony,” he said cheerfully. Luna cleared her throat, and looked down at her phone. Something on the lit screen must have demanded she be elsewhere, or at least that’s what she wanted them to believe. With a curt nod to Kyle, Ronan, and Spencer, she left the room. Jack listened to her high heels click all the way to the stage door. He’s seen the blisters they left on her ankles. He’d offered her a bandaid once. 

It had been just over a year since the band had formed, but their pre-show ritual was the same. Leo was the one who introduced them to soccer. They could play it anywhere and listen to games on the tour bus, waking Luna and Peter and Tess and all the others with their shirtless screaming. They borrowed the song from the Liverpool fans, though none of them had ever been to England. 

The boys huddled together in the wings, their arms around one another, their earpieces dangling from their necks. " _ Walk on, walk on _ ,” the song began in a whisper. “ _ With hope in your heart _ .” The boys began to sway. “ _ And you'll never walk alone _ .” Jack believed it then. “ _ You'll never walk alone _ .”

Jack’s hands shook all throughout the first song. This was a recent ailment. He’d always been a performer. The shy kid melted away on stage, whether that be in his high school gym or onstage at Madison Square Garden. The screaming, though, had begun to unravel something inside him. It was fun at first, the raw, uncontained joy that filled the venues they played. But gradually, it unsettled Jack. They didn’t sound like screams of joy. They sounded like screams of terror, of distress and frustration. And maybe, in a way, they were. The fans would never know him, not in the way that Leo knew him, not in the way his mother did. They could only watch from the dark of the stadium seats, waving glow sticks like signal flares at sea. Meanwhile, Jack had no way of saving them. He couldn’t possibly meet all of them and, even if he could, he couldn’t possibly live up to their expectations. 

When Jack saw his mother, he felt tears well up in his eyes. She was supposed to be in the balcony, but here she was at the lip of the stage. She knew the words to the song they were singing, something about first dates and rainstorms. 

“You’re here,” he wanted to say, but he had to keep singing. He was the lead on the chorus, and the tempo was dragging, and his mother was standing in the pit, swaying side-to-side and smiling faintly. She’d never liked this kind of music, but now it was all she could talk about. She asked Jack about the meanings behind the lyrics, and he decided on answers, because wasn’t art all about deciding, after all? She’d bought their first album on vinyl, even though she didn’t own a record player. “I just want to hold the thing in my hand,” she’d said. “I’m so proud of you, JJ.”

She looked so happy in the pit. She looked at home, almost. And yet Jack didn’t want her there. He wanted her in the balcony, where he wouldn’t have to feel all this love for her all at once. She gave him a small wave, and Jack answered with a wink. A girl beside his mom let out a squeal. Jack looked away. 

Leo, who was supposed to be on the opposite side of the stage, was at his side by the time the song ended.  _ Are you alright?  _ As the screams grew more intense, Jack had learned to read lips out of necessity. He knew Leo’s especially well. 

“My mom’s here,” he said. Jack nodded toward the pit, where someone was swinging a bra in the air like a lasso. It landed on Kyle’s shoulder, and he batted it to the floor as though the thing were poisonous. 

Leo gave Jack’s mother a wave, pointed his mic toward the ground, then he leaned in to whisper, “It’s hard seeing them the first time again after a while. You forget how much you need them until they’re there in front of you.” With that, Leo patted Jack on the shoulder, and returned to his mic stand for the opening of the next song. Leo mostly sang harmony and backup, but every once in a while he got a verse to himself. Spencer was the best singer in the group. There was no denying it. Still, Jack sang lead on most songs, though he’s never thought much of his voice. “There’s something honest about it,” Luna had told him on his first day in the studio a year earlier. “I’d believe in God if you sang me Bible verses with that voice.” The boys had called him Jesus for a few weeks after that. 

“We want to thank you all for coming out tonight,” Ronan called to the crowd before their final song. “We love you,” he added, and the crowd wailed. The sound hammered behind Jack’s eyes and would stay there until he fell asleep that night. He risked another glance at his mother. She was taking a picture of the stage, so Jack smiled. The tears didn’t come this time. The moment felt almost normal, like he was performing in a nativity play. Jack lost himself in the final song, embracing the honesty that was his rasping voice. Sweat poured down his temples and down the back of his t-shirt. His spit flew like mist into the spotlight suspended around him. When he looked up as the last chord rang, his mother was clapping her hands over her head.  _ Bravo _ , he read her lips. It was the only praise he felt he’d ever need again. 

Ronan’s arm was immediately around Jack in the wing. “You were incredible, man.”

Jack surprised himself by explaining, “My mom was in the pit.” To his surprise, Ronan’s face softened. His smile turned from carefree to kind. 

“My dad came to our show in Philly last month,” said Ronan. “I cried during ‘Sandstorm.’” Jack nodded. It was their saddest song. In fact, it was their only sad song. According to Peter, Luna’s husband and everyone’s boss, teenage girls would rather be horny than sad. “And not one of you assholes noticed,” Ronan added, punching Jack in the ribs. Jack savoured moments like this one. He loved his older sister, but he’s always wanted a brother. Now he had four. 

His mom was already waiting in the dressing room. She was talking to Tess like they were old friends, displaying the kind of intimacy only middle-aged women could cultivate out of thin air. It was odd for Jack to think of his mother as middle-aged. She’d had Olivia when she was twenty and Jack when she was twenty-two. The three of them had grown up together. The wrinkles around his mother’s eyes made Jack want to check his own face in the mirror. And yet, in some ways, age had refined her. The silver streaks in her brown hair stood out like comets in the night sky, and her green eyes, the only thing she’d given to Jack and not Olivia, only seemed to grow a darker forest color as the lines around them etched deeper. 

When she spotted Jack, Rebecca Taylor tore across the room toward her son. 

“Three months is too long,” she said into his signature curls. “Three months without seeing your mother isn’t allowed anymore. I forbid it.” She pulled back to study his face. “God, I missed you. God, you’re handsome.” And then she pulled him back to her chest again. “God, you smell like hairspray.” Jack pointed a finger at Tess. 

“Does his hair not look incredible?” she said in defense, pointing a comb brush in Jack’s direction. Rebecca nodded. 

Eventually, she unravelled herself from Jack and hugged all the boys. Kyle tried to play it cool at first, but quickly gave into the maternal magic. Ronan immediately took her into a bear hug, and Rebecca squealed as she was lifted off the ground. Spencer tried for just a handshake, but Rebecca insisted on forcing his stiff frame into an embrace. 

Leo was last. 

“My Leo,” Rebecca said as she held her arms out wide. 

“You look beautiful, Ms. T,” Leo said when she pulled away, and Jack saw that she believed it more than she ever had when he had told her himself. 

“Alright, alright. We’re doing to eat at an authentic Chicago diner, and none of you boys are invited,” said Jack, as he pulled his mother toward the door. They left the dressing room arm-in-arm. 

“He’s a keeper, that one,” Jack’s mother whispered in the doorway. 

“Well, I’m not getting rid of him anytime soon.”

“You know what I mean,” she said. But Jack wasn’t sure that he did. 

In accordance with tradition, they got milkshakes and French toast. Jack asked about Olivia, and his mother frowned. 

“She’s doing great,” she said. This didn’t surprise Jack. His older sister was unshakable. She thrived in any environment, and did it while wearing platform Doc Martens. “She pledged a sorority,” Rebecca went on, her gaze stuck to the snow globe light fixture floating above the booth. “She’s got a boyfriend. I think she joined the frisbee team.” Rebecca rolled a piece of crust between her finger and thumb. “How does she know how to throw a frisbee? I never taught her how to throw a frisbee.”

“Someone at school probably showed her.”

“Probably,” said Rebecca. She chewed on her fingernail, a gesture Jack associated with late bills and forgetting to put oil in the pasta water. 

“So she’s doing great. Why are you making that face?” he asked. His mom tore the frown off her mouth, replacing it with a tight line. 

“She never calls me.” 

It occurred to Jack then that he was the one who usually called his mother. He was the one who picked up her favorite tabloids from the corner store and rearranged the magnets on the fridge to spell out new messages every week. He wondered if she’d changed his last message from over a year ago.  _ SO SWEET AND SO COLD _ , he’d written, though one of the S’s was a five. He muttered the lines under his breath. 

“What?” His mom looked up. 

“Nothing.” But she’d heard. 

“I can’t believe you put a poem about sex on my fridge.” 

“I can’t believe you haven’t rearranged the letters.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Have you?” he asked. She picked up a triangle of French toast and dipped it in her chocolate milkshake. 

“I miss my kids. I was supposed to have a few more years with you.” She spat out the words, like if she said them fast enough, Jack wouldn’t be able to piece them together and feel their hurt. Jack was seventeen. He would’ve been a senior in high school. Instead, he was touring the country in a boyband while his mom’s eyes turned a darker and darker shade of green. 

“I’m sorry,” he said. 

“No.” His mother lifted his chin off the diner table. He let his face rest there in the palm of her hand. The waitress walked by, lingered for a moment, then retreated back to the kitchen when she saw Rebecca’s lower lip trembling. “No, no, no. I’m so proud of you, Jackie. I’m so proud of all you’ve done, and I want you to keep doing this. I want you to keep making people happy and living your dream. That’s my dream for you. Your dream is my dream.” 

She tried in vain to erase the words she’d spun into the air between them with new words, better words, but it didn’t work that way. Jack took a long drink of his milkshake. He hadn’t ordered a strawberry milkshake between the ages of ten and thirteen as he fostered a fear of the color pink. By his freshman year, being someone he wasn’t had become too tiresome a hobby to keep up. 

“Thanks, mom,” Jack mumbled. “I miss you too, though. I hope you know how much I miss you, how much I wish I could do both—stay at home with you and keep doing this- this thing.” He still wasn’t sure what to call the vortex of hairspray and screaming, his new normal. Fame? Success? Life? No convenient labels felt right. 

“Cheers,” said his mother. She extended her arm, holding her milkshake up to the globe of fluorescent light between them. 

“Cheers,” Jack echoed. When they drank, he tasted strawberry chunks and was grateful, if not for the vortex, then for the shreds of himself that had survived its blasts so far. 

The thing about being in a boy band is that you have to wear really skinny pants, and the thing about wearing really skinny pants is that you have to wear really tight underwear, the kind of underwear that left red lines on your pale thighs and made you wonder if maybe you should freeze some of your sperm because it never hurts to be safe, right? 

And yet Ronan insisted on wearing nothing but his tiny underwear while recording their new album. 

“I feel free!” he would scream with his arms outstretched, his thin chest collapsing in on itself. In such moments, Jack was reminded of the fact that, at the end of the day, the five of them were hopeless frauds. Ronan would never take a girl in his arms and carry her into the sunset. At seventeen, he was too damn skinny. If a fan were to run her hands through Jack’s “signature curls” she’d probably get stuck and have to have the thing amputated. Kyle wore glasses and wire retainers offstage. Leo rotated between Dickens novels and Marvel comic books on long tour bus rides. And Spencer- well, Spencer wasn’t a fraud. He lived up to his image as the mysterious one. Jack envied the honesty that guardedness allowed Spencer. 

They’d designated Jack’s room as the recording studio, propping up two mattresses against the wall to form a fortress. The scene was a symbol of their ascent. They’d sold enough albums to book five hotel rooms for the five boys, but not enough for decent sound walls on the road. Their first single had exploded. Their next one would be even bigger. Peter could feel it. Jack wondered how he would feel if he saw Ronan half-naked in a glorified pillow fort at eleven at night. 

“Any chance I’ll get to sleep on one of those in the next hour?” Jack asked Luna, who was leaning over the soundboard they’d balanced on the minibar. She’d changed into a sweatshirt and jeans and looked almost like a normal person, not the music industry tycoon that she was. 

“I’m sorry, love,” was all she said. Her British accent was the only consolation. “We don’t need you tonight, though. We’ve got all your stuff recorded. Leo’s gone to bed if you want to try to sleep on the floor in there.” She looked at a spreadsheet on her phone and gave him the room number. Then she added, “We’ll be done with the album soon. It’s gonna be great.” The smile she gave him was almost maternal. It’s soft edges made something ache in Jack’s chest. 

“I think so too,” he said. “Thanks, Luna. And try to get some sleep yourself.” She patted Jack on the shoulder as he walked away. 

Leo answered a moment after Jack’s knuckles met the wood. He was wearing a winter hat, though it was eighty degrees in his room. His bangs stuck out from under it and Jack wondered if he’d arranged them like that. He had on a soccer jersey with his flannel pajama pants. This was Leo in his purest state. A gameshow hummed faintly in the background. Jack peered over Leo’s shoulder to see a pizza box open on the bed beside the same copy of  _ National Geographic  _ from earlier. Jack thought of stars and felt dizzy for a moment. Though they’d just moved into the hotel, the room already smelled like Leo—like cheap cologne and fruit punch. Jack couldn’t decide what to ask about first, the pizza or the magazine or the game show. Slowly, he stepped inside, brushing his shoulder against Leo’s in the doorway. As he passed, Leo put a hand to Jack’s hair. 

“Signature curl,” he said, almost a whisper. 

“Signature braids,” Jack replied, pulling at the ends of Leo’s wool hat. 

“I thought we’d made it big,” said Leo. “Shouldn’t you be in your own room guzzling tiny bottles of rum and bags of jelly beans from the minibar?” 

“Ronan’s in his underwear,” said Jack. He made a vague gesture, imitating Ronan’s dance moves, and instantly regretted it, but Leo laughed, like they were in on the joke together. 

“Ah.” Leo pulled at the waistband of his pajama pants, the mere memory of those skinny jeans evoking a shudder. “Our own personal Calvin Klein model.” 

Jack set his duffel bag on the floor, but Leo picked it up and placed it on the bed. 

“You take it. I like the floor better anyway.” 

“No you don’t.”

“It centers me. I think I was a monk in a past life.” Jack started to protest, but Leo shoved the box in his face. “Pizza?” Jack peered into the box. Canned pineapple and barbeque chicken. He shook his head, remembered the strawberry milkshake, felt a churning and a glowing in his gut. He couldn’t bring himself to regret a memory that had tasted so good, but he wished he could feel hungry. At least then he’d have an excuse to layer something over his conversation with his mother. Instead, he stuck a still-dry toothbrush in his mouth. 

“Some folks add toothpaste, I’ve heard,” said Leo. Jack shrugged. 

Leo sat down on the bed cross-legged, shoulders relaxed, clasping his knees with both palms. He didn’t ask anything of Jack, but the positioning was an invitation. He’d already stripped the top quilt off the bed. It lay crumpled in a heap in front of the closet. Why did closet doors have to double as mirrors in hotel rooms? What if Jack just wanted to get dressed without being reminded of how long his hair had gotten, how a constellation of acne had crept across his jawline. As Leo rocked back and forth, the buzzing energy in the room calmed to a dull hum that was paralyzing but bearable. He sang their closing song under his breath, the one that never seemed to get old no matter how many times they performed it. A woman on the game show had just lost. Jack watched the screen as a man in a tuxedo patted her on the shoulder with one hand and pushed a microphone into her face with the other. 

When Jack didn’t sit down, Leo asked, “How’s your mom?”

Jack’s head went slack. In his wrinkled t-shirt and untied sneakers, he felt like a little kid. To make matters worse, he couldn’t bear to look at Leo’s hat with its fur flaps and pom pom on top. The carpet was a welcome relief, its beige ocean dotted with rough patches and beer stains. As though he sensed the thought, Leo took that hat off. 

“Oh,” he said. 

Jack still didn’t move, so Leo turned off the TV and stood up. He folded his arms and then unfolded them again. It wasn’t like Leo to negotiate with his body parts. Leo possessed a sureness that didn’t correspond with his mere nineteen years of age, and its absence in that moment startled Jack. 

“I’m sorry,” said Leo, though his eyes were on the overturned magazine. It startled Jack, too, that he’d left it like that. He normally liked to keep the spines from bending—a tip he’d learned from Jack, borrowed from his boss at the print shop.  _ Unhappy spines make for unhappy books.  _

“I didn’t say anything,” mumbled through his toothbrush. His gums felt sore. 

“I’m still sorry.” At that, Jack took the toothbrush out of his mouth and put it in his pocket. It was the only thing he could think to do. 

“She’s all alone. I don’t have to think about it when I don’t see her, when it’s just phone calls and postcards, but that shit hurt. She looked at me like I’d betrayed her or something, like I’d showed up for the Christmas card photoshoot in all black.” 

“What are you supposed to wear to a Christmas card photoshoot?”

“Something festive, like read or green or—fuck, it doesn’t matter. The point is that I feel like a monster for doing what she always encouraged me to do.” 

“Live your dreams.

“Live my dreams!” 

“And wear black.” 

“God, forget the Christmas card.” Leo took the cue and sat up straighter. His eyebrows moved together slightly, a crescent moon appearing on skin that had only a moment earlier been smooth. Jack stared at another blemish he’s forged, but kept going. “Look, you’ve got younger sisters and a fucking dad, man, but my mom’s all alone.” 

“Stepdad,” Leo added. Jack pictured Leo’s Mom’s new husband smoking outside their first gig, pictured his fat fingers swelling over golden rings and his chest hair tangling in a gold chain to match.  _ Call me Ricky _ , he’d told the band, but they’d all stuck to sir or nothing at all. 

“Sorry,” said Jack, wishing he still had the toothbrush between his lips. 

“Can we stop saying sorry?” 

Leo asked the question so earnestly that something beneath Jack’s rib cage stung, tugging relentlessly at his insides. He wanted to take the hat back and place it on Leo’s head again, pull down the flaps to cover his ears, retroactively blocking out all the sadness he’d shed onto the bed sheets.  _ Shhh _ , he wanted to say.  _ You don’t need to worry about me. _

“Yeah,” Jack said softly. He took a pillow off the bed and set it on the floor. 

“Dude, no,” said Leo. 

“What?” 

Leo twirled his finger over Jack’s head, as though casting a spell. “Your emotions are all fucked up ‘cause of your mom, and I’m not letting you sleep on the floor in that kinda condition. It’s inhumane.” 

“It’s  _ your _ room.” Jack took a second pillow off the bed as a compromise, but Leo ripped it back, holding it to his chest in a Wolverine ex. Jack watched his hands form tight fists. 

“It’s  _ your  _ mom.” Leo’s voice was soft. 

“What?” 

Without answering, Leo laid out on the carpet, face down, wrists tucked beneath his chin, guttural snores roaring from his face. Jack pulled at Leo’s limbs, but he’d gone stiff. This was a performance. The TV still breathed eerie normalcy into the air. Jack left it on. 

“I’m sleeping,” Leo would stage-whisper from time to time, until Jack gave up entirely. 

“Goodnight,” he called from the bed. 

Jack could hear the smile in Leo’s echoed reply through the dark. 


	3. Summer 2010

His mother got them lost on the way to his dream. Straight gray highways gave way to curving tunnels of all-consuming green, and Jack wanted smokestacks and sex shop billboards back, but it was too late. They were in the forest, and they were lost, and the tiny bars in the corner of his phone sunk down like dropping thermometers as they climbed into the mountains of upstate New York. Jack took his feet off the dashboard and curled them underneath himself, feigned car sickness as an excuse not to talk to his mom, because he knew his voice would come out low and shaky, and she would reach for his shoulder, and her maternal touch would melt him, and he wasn't in the mood for melting. He was supposed to be ascending, crystallizing into something shiny and new and blemish-free. But when they pulled into a gas station with trash bags pulled over the pumps, the air stunk with weed and bad omens. They got out of the car, slammed their doors in mother-son tandem. A crow cawed. A line of ants marched toward an overflowing trash can. Jack kicked at a KitKat wrapper. He noticed his shoe was untied, but decided to leave it. A wave of undeserving washed over him. He was hungry, but so were the ants. He tripped on the way into the little store with its dirty little windows. 

“Where are you folks headed?” the little man behind the counter asked after Rebecca finally got up the nerve to ask for directions. 

“North?” she said, and Jack beat his forehead against the filthy glass that boxed them in with all the chewing gum and scratch-off tickets. 

When they got back in the car, Jack cradled a pack of Twizzlers and two cold Sprites in his t-shirt. Rebecca glanced at him as she fastened her seatbelt. 

“You used to carry your stuffed animals around like that.” 

“Don’t do that.” Jack couldn’t help but smile. He tore open the pack and shoved a Twizzler into his mouth to quell the infection. 

“What?”

“Don’t reflect back on my childhood right before you drop me off, like you’re shipping me off to war or something. This isn’t the end of something.”

“It’s the start of something,” she said before, inevitably, putting a hand on his shoulder. 

Eventually the green mouth of upstate mountains spat them out beside a lake that reflected a noon sun as white as the moon. Rebecca hugged Jack by the rusted mailbox at the top of the gravel driveway. 

“I’ll call you,” Jack assured his mom as he peeled her face from his t-shirt, still damp from the cold Sprites.

“There’s no service out here.”

“I’ll just shout really loud.” Rebecca punched him lightly on the shoulder. “Hey, I’ll call CPS,” he said. It was his line whenever she poked or prodded at him, borrowed from Olivia’s fully-stocked toolbox of teenage quips. 

“There’s no service out here,” Rebecca repeated. It was right that it should end that way, with his lame attempt at injecting humor into their sadness failed, and his head buried in her chest one last time, until he heard a car crunching down the road and pulled away like he’d been stuck with a sewing needle. 

It was Ronan. Looking back later, Jack would be glad it had been Ronan first. He wasn’t yet ready for the others—Spencer with his unreadable expression, Kyle with the golden sound that rang out from his chest even when his mouth was closed, and Leo. He wouldn’t be ready for Leo when he arrived. He wouldn’t ever be ready for Leo. 

But Ronan emerged from his mom’s minivan with a duffel bag in each hand and, over his blonde hair, a backwards baseball cap the same shade of blue as his eyes. 

“I’m gonna hug you, man,” was the first thing he said to Jack. “I’m a hugger.” And the embrace was so different from the one his mother had given him a moment before that a tear somewhere inside Jack sewed itself up. They met diagonally, each with an arm above and below, their hands formed into apelike fists.  _ Brother _ , the hug said. Jack recognized the word immediately, despite never having had one before. 

A few minutes later, he shook hands with Kyle and Spencer—Kyle dirty blonde with elfin features, Spencer lanky, brooding, and strikingly beautiful. Jack decided to look at their clothes instead, but this too turned out to be a mistake. All three of the other boys were dressed for the wilderness in cargo pants and hiking boots. Pretending to spot a beetle crawling across the driveway, Jack looked down at his skinny jeans and white sneakers. His mom had bought him both especially for the band. 

_ I’m sure they’ll have a wardrobe person or something.  _

_ It never hurts to be safe, JJ.  _

When the others weren’t looking, he stepped on one shoe with the other and repeated the procedure until both were sufficiently scuffed up. Still, he felt the bite of gravel through the soles and the bitter chafe of his jeans with every step up to the cabin. 

Leo showed up last. At eighteen, he was the only one who drove himself. He parked his hand-me-down station wagon on the grass and emerged from the car in sunglasses and a jean jacket. At first, all Jack could fixate on were the sneakers on his feet, just simple, canvas sneakers, spotless and white like the ones Rebecca had picked out at Payless. 

“I like your shoes,” was the first thing he said to Leo. It was a joke that had only been brewing inside his own mind. Out of context, Leo looked down at his feet, back up at Jack, and shrugged with a smile. 

“Thanks.” 

“You’re welcome,” He hated himself for adding, but Leo’s magnetism was pulling unformed words out of Jack’s throat in long, awkward strings of Christmas lights—the tacky rainbow kind, not the gold ones they use at wedding receptions. “I’m Jack. I’m from Virginia. I got here first, but it looks like everyone’s here now that you’re here.”  _ He’s here _ , Jack’s mind echoed, and his mouth almost repeated. Though Jack was much taller than Leo, it didn’t feel that way at first. Leo bounced on the balls of his feet with glowing energy that was anything but nervous. This kid was ready, Jack decided.  _ He’s here.  _ This kid owns an iron, Jack thought to himself as he studied the pale blue button-down that matched Leo’s eyes.  _ He has to know that shirt matches his eyes,  _ Jack thought.  _ His eyes _ . New mantras were crystallizing within him like delicate frost on a window.  _ His eyes.  _

“Welcome!” A man was standing on the front porch of the cabin with his arms outstretched. Jack jumped at the sound, and the others turned to look at the cloud of kicked up gravel. “So young, so beautiful, so talented” the man went on. The boys turned back. Jack pretended to spot another beetle. The man hopped off the porch and started passing out handshakes. He had a buzz cut and square glasses that were too big for his face. He could’ve been forty, but he also could’ve been fifty. His five o’clock shadow made Jack’s face itch. He’d only learned to shave a few months earlier. He and his mother had watched a YouTube video. 

“I’m Peter,” the man said when he got to Jack. He kept holding Jack’s hand after it had gone slack, so Jack tensed up again, which made him wonder if he’d squeezed too hard. Peter didn’t seem to notice.  “Enjoy this week,” Peter went on. “This is the last time in your life that you’ll be a normal person.” 

“What will we be after this week?” Ronan raised his hand to ask, like a student in the front row of class. 

Peter laughed and took off his glasses. “Stars,” he said. The second time was hardly more than a whisper. “Stars.” 

Luna was making chili in the kitchen. She had her hair tied up in a red scarf and a long necklace hanging down her button-down with the sleeves rolled. The smell made Jack’s eyes well up. It was full of spice and subtle sweetness and rich  _ warmth _ . The kitchen smelled like a home, but a home that was foreign to him. It felt like standing in a snowstorm and peering into a warm cottage, a fire crackling inside. Luna hummed a song Jack recognized but couldn’t place. It was a love song, he was sure, and it was from long before his time or his mother’s time. Luna, though, was young and elegant. Still, she sang the song like it belonged to her. She used a serrated knife like it was an extension of her bangled arm. 

Jack didn’t have to blink back his tears. They evaporated as Peter swept into the kitchen. He placed his hands on Luna’s hips from behind and kissed her neck. She didn’t lean away, but kept chopping and humming. 

Jack thought of vampires and wooden stakes. 

The cabin, which had a sauna and billiard room, didn’t have a kitchen table, so they ate chili on the floor. The five boys sat in a circle on an oriental rug, while Luna and Peter watched from high stools in the corner, laughing quietly between sips of red wine. Adult supervisors. The scene reminded Jack of snacktime in elementary school. As he mopped up chili with a piece of cornbread, Spencer elbowed him. 

“Part of me feels like we’re being kidnapped.”

“I never imagined hostage food would be so good,” Jack said with his mouth full. The thought had been absent minded but Spencer laughed, loudly enough that the others boys turned. 

Something warm ignited in Jack’s chest, a sense of belonging, a heat that quickly made his cheeks burn when Leo furrowed his brow and asked, “Care to share with the rest of the class?”

Spencer retreated into himself, burying his face in his empty bowl, as though his spoon could dig through the ceramic to another pocket of meat and beans. Leo turned his gaze to Jack and raised an eyebrow. Jack shrugged. Leo smiled. They were sharing a joke. Sure, it had no words, but they’d exchanged something from across the circle. Jack kept eating because it felt like the only thing to do, but his stomach had ceased to operate. His blood, it seemed, had ceased to flow. There was no sound from Spencer’s spoon clinking against the side of his bowl. There was no Kyle gazing at his reflection in the sliding glass door to the porch, and there was no Ronan explaining Star Wars fan theories into the conversational void. There was only a raised eyebrow, a shrug, a smile. 

Leo had taken off his jean jacket and undone his button-down to reveal a t-shirt underneath. When he noticed Jack studying its chest he said, “Nerd camp.” It had only been an acronym to Jack— _ SCAC— _ framed by printed constellations. _.  _ “It stands for Space Cadet Adventure Camp,” said Leo. “My parents couldn’t swing the NASA one, five kids and all.” The other boys didn’t seem to be listening. Ronan got up for seconds. 

“I work at a print shop,” said Jack, though he immediately regretted it. The connection was an invention of his electrified mind. Something about space camp, its implications of passion and intellect, made Jack think of the print shop. The room where he placed Leo in his mind, full of test tubes and beeping computers, smelled like the print shop—clean and metallic, aged and cool. “I like binding books,” he added, as though that would clarify everything. 

But Leo just said, “That sounds really interesting,” and he leaned closer like he meant it, like he expected Jack to say more. 

“Eat and be merry,” Peter called as Jack was sifting through images of papercuts and ink stains. “This week is about bonding, but it’s also about hard work. Being in a boy band isn’t all fun and games. Tomorrow, you start vocal training, fitness regimens, choreography, and wardrobe.” Ronan snorted and a bean slipped out of his mouth. Kyle punched him in the arm as though the gesture were familiar, as though the two were brothers. Spencer groaned. “I’ll be back next Saturday. In the meantime, Luna, my beautiful wife, will be here to watch over you.” He pulled Luna to his side again. Jack watched a drop of red wine stain the white carpet. Ronan’s hand shot up. This seemed to be something Peter was used to, as he pointed to Ronan with an extended arm and a curt nod. 

“Yes?”

“Is there ice cream in the freezer?” he asked. 

“Yes,” said Luna. “And there’s fudge in the fridge.” 

“The print shop,” Leo said later, long after Jack had suppressed the memory, long after the bowls had been rinsed in the sink, and the sweatshirts had been piled on, and the bottles had been smuggled into backpacks. We’re going to see the moon reflected on the lake, Kyle had said in an unusual moment of poeticism, and that’s the story they had stuck to, even Spencer who emerged from his bedroom with an Altoid tin full of weed and a jumbo bag of sour gummy worms which he passed around beneath the stars. 

“It’s a new fucking moon,” Leo had chuckled up at the sky on their way through the woods. 

“Peter’s head is too far between Luna’s tits to notice shit,” said Spencer. When Jack laughed, he offered the bag of gummy worms like it was a prize for loyalty. He took one even though he hated sour foods. Mixed with the sting of the night air and the smell of pine, they tasted fine. 

“You work at a print shop,” Leo repeated. They were all huddled on the dock, the cold outweighing their collective sense of masculinity. Jack’s knee was touching Leo’s. Ronan and Spencer were lying elbow to elbow, heads up toward the sky. Kyle was trying to start a fire by rubbing two sticks together. Spencer had brought weed, yes, but no one had a lighter. 

“It pays well,” Jack lied. Leo just stared, his eyes flicking from Jack’s hands to his face and back again. He knew there was more to be said, and Jack found himself wanting to tell him. He turned his shoulder and lowered his voice, so only Leo could hear the truth pour out. “There’s this shop a few blocks from my house. It’s run by an old woman and her husband and her friend, or maybe her sister, I’m not sure. They’re not particularly warm people, but they’re kind. Does that make sense?” Leo nodded. He had already been nodding. “I used to hang around the shop after school, at first to order fliers for a band I was in and then just to be there. Gerry was always playing jazz music on this old stereo. He called me “Jack Taylor,” never just Jack. Gladys, his wife, would wipe down the counters with bleach every hour on the hour like the place was a doctor’s office or something. The printer was always humming and spitting out posters and business cards. Gerry would use the paper cutter in rhythm with the song playing, which drove Gladys crazy because sometimes the song would be really slow, and she’d shout, ‘Double time! Double time!’ I really liked watching Joan bind books. God, it’s so mesmerizing. I wish I could show you right now—the folding and cutting and gluing. She didn’t like me watching, though, so one day she told me to get behind the counter and help her or get out of the shop. Gerry and Gladys owned the place, but Joan ran it, so I did what she said. God, I love binding books. I love how the place smells. I love Gerry’s jazz music. It’s all so weird and wonderful.” Jack took a moment to catch his breath before adding, “They pay me minimum wage.” 

What Leo said next would remain in Jack’s mind for years as half a dream and half a memory. 

“I could kiss you.” 

The words hung there for an instant before Leo followed them with, “I hope you’re putting it toward a 401k,” as though he hadn’t said the first bit at all. His expression hadn’t changed. Jack could have sworn he didn’t even blink. Leo laughed, so Jack laughed too, and the moment was gone. Jack felt out a hand to feel the air between them, to test whether some force had tampered with reality, or at least to grasp a molecule of evidence. But the words were gone. They could only be remembered, not confirmed. 

When the boys made their way back around midnight, Leo wove in and out of the group, kicking a rock down the gravel path as he went. He never lingered near Jack for long. With no moon, it was too dark for Jack to make out his shoelaces, but, somehow, Leo kept kicking that little rock all the way to the cabin. 


	4. Spring 2011

“It’s just us on a beach,” said Ronan, his head tilted to the side. 

“Exactly.” Kyle’s arms were folded. He’d gotten taller between sixteen and seventeen, but Jack was still the tallest. He knew this bothered Kyle, and it brought Jack great comfort that they could still worry about small, boyish things. 

It was unusually cold for April. Leo was wrapped in a blanket and had draped himself across Jack’s back. Jack tried not to move for fear that Leo would change his mind and drape himself elsewhere. All five of the boys were crowded beneath a tent in front of a TV-screen the size of a cereal box. 

They’d just finished shooting their first music video, though it hadn’t felt like they’d done any real work. Cameras had followed them around while they played football in the sand and swam in the ocean in their jeans. When a man in a baseball cap yelled “ _ That’s a wrap _ ” Spencer had laughed, but the guy wasn’t kidding. That was all that was being asked of them. 

Jack was the star of the video. No one said it, but no one had to. Peter explained that they had to put Jack in the center because he was the tallest, but height had nothing to do with the redheaded girl he was asked to lean over just so, allowing the setting sun to fill what little space remained between their faces. That morning, when they arrived on set, Luna had promised Jack he wouldn’t have to kiss anyone, but when the cameras started rolling, Peter whispered something in the director’s ear. 

“Change of plans,” he called through a rolled up script. “We’re doing the kiss.” 

The girl’s name was Mia, but they’d started calling her Hamm after she beat the boys at soccer. It was part of the cheesy video concept—kicking around a ball like they always played with their hair swept up into perfect coiffes with foundation slopped on their faces. Jack liked her—liked the way she snorted when she laughed, the way her freckles spread even across her eyelids, the way her arm had brushed against his when she stole the ball from between his feet. He wasn’t sure what he wanted from her, but the want was there—amorphous but glowing like the orange sun reflected on the water. So when the director said they were doing the kiss, he didn’t stop to think about it. He just closed his eyes and did it.

Her lips were softer than he’d expected. In all his imagined kisses, there was something firmer to press against, but Hamm melted into him. Up this close, he could taste the chemical makeup of her lip gloss and the salt of her sweat—or maybe that was just the spray of the ocean. When he pulled away, there wasn’t time to process it all. The director was yelling cut while the boys laughed, and the sun was finally sinking beneath the horizon so that Hamm’s face was pale against the dark, not golden as it had been before he’d closed his eyes. He tried to make out her freckles, but she was already turning away, and Kyle was pulling Jack into a headlock.

“You seemed to enjoy yourself out there,” Leo said later, a blanket still pulled around his shoulders. He nodded back toward the place in the sand where Jack and Hamm had stood against the sunset. They were sitting in director’s chairs with their names stitched in the back, though Jack was sitting in Leo’s and vice versa. They were still too new to this world to take it seriously yet. 

“Hamm’s pretty hot, right?” Jack said, only because it felt like the right thing to say. What he thought was,  _ Hamm looks like a real life princess  _ and  _ I want to taste her lip gloss again because the memory is already starting to fade.  _ But her shots were over. She had left an hour ago, and Jack hadn’t asked for her number. He could’ve tracked it down another way, sure, but that felt like cheating somehow. He’d been too much of a coward to do it the right way. That was the end of it. 

Leo tugged the blanket tighter so that Jack could count each of his knuckles through the fabric. He stared straight ahead. “You’ll have beautiful children.” 

Jack gave a half smile “Thanks,” he said, again allowing autopilot to steer his words. It was cold, and he wished he had a blanket of his own. They were waiting for something, but he couldn’t remember what. So much of stardom, it turned out, involved waiting. 

The chair moaned under Leo’s weight as he wrestled his way to the ground while keeping his arms folded in the warmth. Anyone else would’ve looked like a little kid, Jack thought to himself, but he looked regal. He didn’t need a sunset to paint his features to life. Even under the harsh set lights his eyes stood out a clear blue, and his cheeks were barely dusted pink from a day in the sun. He turned to Jack, as though to say a final word on the matter, but then he just exhaled instead, and strode off toward the water. 

Autopilot or not, Jack didn’t have a choice in the matter. 

He followed. 


	5. Winter 2012

Jack and Leo made dinner to celebrate their second music video. This one was on a rooftop instead of a beach and blew their first video out of the water—one-hundred million views in less than a week. But the meal was also a kind of christening for their new apartment. The newness of it all ignited something in Jack. The privacy of the walls made him giddy. He bounced up and down on his heels beside Leo like a little kid that needed to use the bathroom, or at least that’s how Leo described it. 

“Fuck you, I’m excited.”

“To spend time with me?” Leo stirred the pasta with a fork. They’d remembered to buy a pot, but not one of those long spoons with the holes in it. Every few seconds, he drew his hand pack in pain from the heat. The more times he drew back, the longer he was able to withstand the steam. Jack couldn’t decide if he liked witnessing callouses form. 

“To be in my own apartment,” said Jack. “I already spend every instant of my life with you.”

Leo asked Jack to taste a piece of pasta to see if it was the way he liked it—still firm, but not break-your-teeth firm. It was already too soft, but Leo liked it that way so Jack didn’t say anything, just as he hadn’t said anything when Leo came home from the corner store with penne instead of rigatoni. It was all pasta. It was all made by Leo. 

There was jazz playing from the speaker in Leo’s phone, not because either of them liked jazz, but because Leo had decided that was what grownups in New York City did—cook pasta in their apartments and listen to nine-minute songs. Jack wasn’t one to question Leo, so he didn’t mention that grownups would probably listen to those songs on a real stereo. The sound was tinny and muffled, but Leo still hummed along. His too-long apron swung like a pendulum as he swayed his hips from side to side. It was Jack’s apron from the print shop, but it was just as good at catching sauce as it was at catching ink.

They were seventeen and nineteen and fiercely pretending to be adults because the world insisted on calling them boys. The apartment was too cheap for how much money sat in their new bank accounts, but they weren’t used to frivolous spending. Jack liked to sit on the rusted fire escape and look out at the city. Leo liked small spaces. He’d grown up sharing a bedroom with four sisters. High ceilings and empty carpeting made him dizzy. It was the first place they’d looked at and the easiest decision they ever made together. They weren’t crammed in Peter’s vacation home with the other band members, but they weren’t alone either. When their first album hit number one, Ronan and Kyle each got a place in LA, Spencer moved back in with his mom, and Jack and Leo fell together. They’d found a limbo space that felt rooted in something steady. Jack liked the way their sneakers looked lined up beside the front door. 

Jack tried the pasta, nodded, and then kissed Leo. 

He kissed Leo like it was something he did all the time—with a hand resting on the small of Leo’s back and a slight smile on his lips. He only lingered on his lips for a moment before pulling away. “It’s good,” Jack said. Then, he opened the fridge and pulled out a bagged salad, checked the expiration date, and dumped the wilted lettuce in a bowl. Leo asked for a colander, and Jack checked a few cupboards before finding the right one and setting it in the sink. The steam woke Jack up. He was close enough to Leo that some of the pasta water splashed his arm. It stung, but it was the steam that did it—wafting its way up his nose and mouth, snaking down into his lungs, hot oxygen coursing through him again. 

“Shit,” he said under his breath, and Leo turned. 

“I was wondering when you’d say that.” 

“I’m so sorry.”

“Yes, the pasta is a little underdone for my taste, but it’s still edible.” Leo went back to turn off the burner. The marinara sauce was bubbling over, splashing bloodstains on the white countertop. 

“Can we just pretend—?” Jack’s voice shook. He thought of the interview from a few months earlier, of the way Peter had erased it with a single tweet. Somehow, though, the more intimate moments were more difficult to annihilate. They sunk in narrow but deep, seeping through the floorboards and lingering in the air vents. 

“Consider it forgotten,” said Leo. He used the edge of his apron to wipe the counter clean, and Jack winced as he watched the stain set in. 

It had happened in a one-on-one interview a few weeks earlier. Jack hated being alone like that. He liked the security of the other boys. If he didn’t want to answer a question, he stayed quiet, and someone filled in. If he got bored, he messed with Ronan’s hair or whispered a joke in Leo’s ear. When he was on his own, the interviewer expected him to answer any question. Particularly as the band’s fame increased, his every hair flick and nose twitch could be scrutinized, his every answer made canon. 

The couch looked soft, but when he sat on it, the cushion didn’t give an inch. He crossed his legs, but Peter shook his head, so Jack planted both feet on the ground and put his elbows on his knees. The interviewer was young. She looked like a fan—skinny jeans and a low-cut top, flat-ironed hair and earrings that shimmered silver with her every gesticulation. She seemed nice. Jack told her he liked her earrings, which made Peter frown. He had been hanging around more often lately. The more famous the band became, the more they needed to be controlled, the more was at stake. Jack’s curls, stiff as dead tree limbs, were proof. He wondered if the interviewer noticed, if she found him to be disappointing up close. 

She read the first question off a thick neon card, the kind reality TV-hosts hold. She giggled through every syllable, so that Jack had to lean closer to make them out: “Who was your first crush?” 

The girl was sitting so close to Jack that he caught the smell of her breath. Luckily, it was toothpaste and maybe something lemon-flavored—a poppyseed muffin or a shortbread cookie. Jack thought of his own breath. Had he remembered to brush his teeth that morning? Had he eaten an everything bagel for breakfast? Had he eaten anything for breakfast? The girl was staring at him, and Peter had looked up from his phone, and the camera blinked back with its red eye, which meant they were live, which meant that lots of people were watching, which meant that this mattered. Jack wondered if they had asked Leo this same question in his one-on-one interview. Surely, they had all been asked this question at some point, but Jack couldn’t summon the memory. He couldn’t summon a memory of ever having had a crush on anyone. He thought of Hamm, thought of her red hair and how she snorted when she laughed, but “crush” wasn’t the right word for her magnetic pull. And then his mind returned to Leo. More than that, his chest returned to Leo. There was something pounding there now, but it had a direction— _ Le-o _ , said his heartbeat,  _ Le-o, Le-o, Le-o.  _

He  _ had  _ eaten breakfast. The thought hit Jack in the forehead, because Leo had poured milk over Jack’s cereal. Jack had emptied a box of Froot Loops into his bowl, walked to the window to look at the sunrise, and then returned to find milk on his cereal. It was just the right amount, too, so that it wouldn’t get soggy too quickly, but there weren’t any pieces left dry either. 

The interviewer's earrings weren’t flashing anymore because her head rested perfectly still. Jack was just about to say “Froot Loops,” when he remembered what the question had been, and perhaps because he was so tired, or perhaps because of the cereal, Jack answered honestly. 

“Leo Knighten,” he said. 

The girl laughed, but Jack didn’t. They moved on to the next question. Jack didn’t look at Peter, but he could feel eyes on him. He could feel the room shrinking. Luna was there when the interview ended. She whispered something to Peter as Jack made his way over, something that made his face turn from beet red to more of a hot pink. 

“That was a joke,” Luna said softly. She held up a leather jacket and Jack turned around to slip his arms through the sleeves. He was used to this sort of thing by now—being treated like a mannequin. 

He didn’t need to ask what she was talking about. “No, it wasn’t a joke.” 

“It was a joke,” she said again, this time putting a hand on Jack’s shoulder and knitting her eyebrows together in a kind of silent apology. 

And so it was decided. Jack was a comedian. Leo was a punchline. Peter had already tweeted something out from Jack’s account. Fans were already replying with laughing emojis and bromance fanart. 

Peter’s face had softened by the time they made it to the van where the other boys were waiting after their solo interviews. The van doors were thrown open and a game of poker had broken out on the concrete bathed in streetlights. Ronan’s underwear appeared to be in the pot, along with some guitar picks and a CD of their first single still in its plastic wrap. Luna must have left her sunglasses in the cupholder because Leo was wearing them on his head. They pushed his hair back so his face lit up on full display. Jack could only look at him for a moment, before Peter pulled him aside. 

“That’s the end of that,” he said. It was almost nine at night and Jack could smell coffee on Peter’s breath. He noticed, too, the white hairs that dotted his five o’clock shadow and the creases in his blazer. Jack had spent the past months searching for cuts in Peter’s immortal skin, but spotting them in the shadow behind the van with the wind breathing into his thin jacket, he wished he could unsee the imperfections. 

“The end of what?” Jack asked, knowing the answer, but willing his demigod manager to back down. 

Peter looked toward Leo and then back at Jack before repeating, “The end.” There was nothing malicious in the words. They just sounded tired. Jack wondered if this wasn’t the first time Peter had given such an order, had forced someone young and shiny and naive into a box with no breathing holes. 

Even though it was forty degrees outside, they ate on the fire escape. Leo wanted to watch the sunset, although they could only catch glimpses of orange clouds between the skyscrapers. Balancing bowls on their kneecaps was something they’d grown accustomed to after all the backstage meals. Leo had a napkin tucked into his sweater. It should’ve made him look like a little kid, but it didn’t. Instead, Jack thought, he looked dignified. He ate without looking, keeping his eyes fixed on places where the dying light broke through. 

“It’s about the feeling,” Leo insisted through a mouthful of pasta. “The air  _ feels  _ lighter.”

He was right. Inside the apartment, the air was heavy with what Jack refused to acknowledge and what Leo swallowed by humming along to jazz he had never heard before, catching up a beat behind the improvised saxophone runs. Outside it was cold. Jack didn’t have to chew because his teeth were chattering so hard, but at least the sight of the stove wasn’t there to remind him of what he’d done. At least Leo couldn’t hear the tremor in Jack’s exhales. 

“And the light paints everything golden.” Jack said  _ everything _ , but he meant  _ you _ —the bridge of Leo’s nose reddened by the cold, the strip of ankle that peeked out from his cuffed jeans, the tips of his ears that reminded Jack of Peter Pan. 

But he’d said  _ everything  _ instead, and Leo nodded in agreement. 


	6. Summer 2010

Peter had rented bunk beds and arranged them in the cabin’s mildewed basement. Kyle said it reminded him of summer camp, but Jack had never been to summer camp. Instead, all he could think of was prison. His mom had urged him to bring a pillow from home, but he’s insisted he didn’t need one. Peter Bryde was a millionaire. His pillows would be plentiful and stuffed with goose feathers. This, as it turned out, was not the case. Peter hadn’t considered that the rentals wouldn’t come with pillows, but he called this a lucky surprise, a way to increase the “bonding” experience, as though the boys should use each other’s limbs for head support. The lack of pillows wouldn’t have bothered Jack normally, but their absence was symbolic of an unwelcome coming of age. He wasn’t a kid anymore. He’d have to provide his own pillows from here on out. At least that was how it felt from his bunk. Maybe, too, he wouldn’t have needed a pillow if there weren’t a brown water stain on the ceiling shaped like an hourglass. Jack stared at it until his neck grew stiff, and only then did he fall into a nightmare sleep punctured by Ronan’s snores and the faint metallic groan of Kanye from Spencer’s headphones. 

Leo woke him up when it was still dark outside. Or, rather, Leo gave him a reason to open his eyes, to give into his mind which had been awake and whirring since midnight. 

“Let’s get donuts,” Leo whispered. Standing on the bed below, he rested his elbows on Jack’s bunk and nestled his chin between his fists. 

Jack rolled over. “I’m sleeping,” he lied. 

“No you’re not. You’ve been tapping your thumb against the mattress to the beat of Spencer’s music for the past hour.” 

“Where are we gonna find donuts in the middle of nowhere?”

“At the donut shop.” 

“What donut shop?” 

“I passed one on the way here. Come on.” Leo pulled away Jack’s sweatshirt, which he’d been using as a blanket, slung the hood over his head, and sauntered out of the room with it hanging behind him like a cape. 

Jack caught up to Leo in the driveway.

“You’re wearing glasses,” said Leo. He threw the sweatshirt back. Now he was wearing a winter hat complete with ear flaps, braids, and an oversized pom-pom on top. Jack decided to ignore this. 

“Yeah. I usually wear contacts.”

“They suit you.” 

Jack wanted to take off his glasses, but he also wanted to see. Insead, when they were both in the car, he asked, “Is this allowed?” 

“I have a driver’s license. I’m not a criminal.” Leo still hadn’t taken off the hat, even as the AC struggled to drive out the summer humidity. 

“I mean, like, are we allowed to leave the cabin? Aren’t we supposed to be bonding?”

“Is this not bonding?” Rather than turn around, Leo put the car in reverse and backed all the way up the half-mile driveway. Leo put his hand on Jack’s headrest to look out the back windshield. The maturity of the gesture startled Jack. He was suddenly aware of the two year gap between them, and the fact that he’d failed the test to get his learner’s permit three times. 

The sun was starting to seep through the pine trees, and the side of the road was dotted with old people walking dogs, holding neon free weights, or both. Everyone they passed smiled and waved, and Leo waved back like they were all his old friends, like he’d grown up in this little mountain town in upstate New York. 

The donut shop had once been a bank. They’d converted the ATM outside into an “ADM” machine for “Automated Donut Machine.” The double doors that led inside were too fancy for a donut shop with their polished glass panes and golden handles. The only thing that fit were the pink shutters they’d added to the windows. A woman in a chef’s hat waved to them from inside and pointed to the sign beside the door. The digital clock in Leo’s car blinked five forty-five. According to the sign’s cursive lettering, the place didn’t open until six. Leo leaned over Jack and reached into the glove compartment where he pulled out a cassette tape that had been painted purple with nail polish. 

“It’s my sister’s,” said Leo when Jack’s eyebrows went up. When Jack didn’t reply, Leo added, “It’s a cassette tape.” And then, “It plays music.” 

“I know what a cassette tape is.” Leo ignored him, slipped the tape into the stereo, and pressed play. A song by the Beatles came on—something cliché and optimistic about the world. Jack rolled down his window to let in the sounds of the town waking up—the sprinklers and jingling dog leashes—but then Leo started to sing. 

His voice seemed ordinary at first. It wasn’t particularly high or low. Its tone wasn’t particularly raspy or rich. It was clear, though, like a bell, or maybe like a bird. People always compare human voices to bird ones, and such a comparison always felt ridiculous to Jack. That was until he heard Leo’s voice, free of vibrato or frills, somehow ringing against the upholstery like it were a vaulted ceiling. Jack rolled up his window slowly, so Leo wouldn't notice. When Leo closed his eyes for the chorus, Jack turned back the volume dial a few notches, so John Lennon was drowned out, every so slightly, by Leo Knighten. He was oblivious, of course, existing in his own realm ruled by the desire to have fun and drink in life through a silly straw. They made it through the whole tape, even as a line of hungry people in baseball caps and ripped jeans stacked up outside the donut shop and the doors swung open at last, the sweet, sticky smell blasting in through the air vents. 

By the time they got inside, they were all out of chocolate frosted and only had one Boston cream left. They brought back a box of jelly-filled and plain glazed for the boys and split the Boston cream on the road, Jack feeding bites to Leo who insisted on keeping both hands on the wheel. 

“Precious cargo,” he kept repeating with his mouth full, and Jack wasn’t sure if Leo was referring to him or the donuts. 

Leo gave Jack the idea. He announced it around the breakfast table or, rather, around the breakfast carpet. He was still wearing the hat, but none of the boys had said anything. Jack was beginning to see that it looked natural, or, rather, that Leo’s natural state was one of absurdity. 

“We should sing something,” he said. 

Spencer groaned. “It’s too early in the morning for that shit.”

“That’s the whole reason we’re here,” said Jack. “I heard Leo sing in the car this morning and he was absurdly good. Now I want to hear the rest of you.”

“Thanks, man,” said Leo, who had just returned from the kitchen with a cup of coffee. When the bitter smell hit Jack, he was reminded again of Leo’s being eighteen, and his eyes went to the stubble on his chin that hadn’t been there the night before. 

Ronan stood up and wiped powdered sugar on his sweatpants. “I’ll sing.” 

He belted out something from  _ The Phantom of the Opera _ . Jack was impressed by the big voice that came out of the little blonde boy with the freckled nose. The scene was ridiculous, yes, but he could sing. Spencer, Kyle, and Jack gaped, but Leo joined in on the last chorus. His voice was different than it had been in front of the donut shop—exaggerated and manufactured, but the clear tone was still there underneath all the drama. Spencer and Kyle laughed, but Jack wanted to shake Leo.  _ Show them _ .  _ Show them what you showed me.  _ The song ended with a tango. Leo took a red tulip from a vase in the mantel and put the stem between his teeth. Playing at both roles, he dipped Ronan for the grand finale, and the other three burst into applause. When they settled back down on the carpet, Jack stood up. 

He felt oppressively sixteen standing before the four other boys. He regretted having stood up at all, but it was too late. He flicked his hair out of his eyes, cleared his throat. Leo smiled. Spencer scowled. Kyle whispered something to Ronan, but Ronan’s eyes were fixed on Jack.

He sang a Beatles song, one filled with clichés and major chords. It wasn’t the same one from the cassette tape, but its message was the same. It spoke of love and acceptance, the kinds of lyrics that made singers’ teeth rot after too long. Jack didn’t know all the words, so he dropped the consonants by the wayside and filled in with delicate, nonsensical syllables. Jack’s voice was nothing like a bell. His tone bittered the sweetness of the song, so much so that the boys stopped chewing. Ronan, in fact, dropped his jelly donut on the carpet. It left a stain where it landed at Luna’s feet. Jack stopped when he saw it hit the ground and splatter outward. A speck even landed on Luna’s white slippers beside a rose embroidered in pale pink. Jack sat down, as though he hadn’t opened his mouth at all. He had, though, and his song—half Lennon poetry, half nonsense—still wafted through the room. By the look on her face, Jack feared Luna could smell it like an odor that needed eradicating. 

“We brought donuts,” said Leo. He passed her the box where half of a glazed donut sat amongst a graveyard of grease marks and crumbled napkins. 

Luna picked it up and took a bite of the side that looked untouched. “Thanks.” She looked tired and almost mortal. As she chewed, the boys began reenacting Leo’s tango, while Jack sunk into himself, grateful to be wearing an oversized sweatshirt, grateful, too, that he’d let his hair grow out to nearly cover his eyes. Luna sat down beside him and started humming the Beatles song until Jack had no choice but to look up. 

“Wow,” she whispered, a secret only the two of them could hear. 

“You should get the others to go,” Jack said quickly. “Spencer and Kyle haven’t sung a note.”

Kyle, in fact, had broken out into a Frank Sinatra song that prompted his jaw to unhinge. Jack was impressed, and a little intimidated, but Luna only looked up for a moment. She lowered her head again and eased her voice down to a whisper while the boys heckled Spencer to sing something. Leo put his headphones on top of the fridge. Ronan grabbed onto his leg like a kid refusing to be left at daycare. Kyle kept singing after his audience dissolved, and Jack recognized at once that this was a boy who sang for the love of it. The thought warmed him. 

“Peter told me you were talented, but I’d never watched the battle of the bands video,” Luna was telling Jack. “I figured you were an ordinary kid with an extraordinary face, but you’ve got both, Jack.” Luna’s hair was in a silk scarf the color of the tropical ocean—something Jack had only seen in pictures. He wanted to compliment it, but he couldn’t move his tongue.  _ Extraordinary.  _ The word stung somehow. It promised something. Jack didn’t want promises. 

Spencer was singing now, so Jack didn’t have to reply. Suddenly, the word “extraordinary” was relative. Spencer was opening his mouth and something raw and inhuman was pouring out of him in the form of an R&B song Jack had heard once or twice on the radio but never paid attention to before. It seemed now as though he had glossed over the greatest song ever written. If Leo’s voice was a bell, then Spencer’s was a timpani. It was rich and reverberating, spanning the low and the high and the in between but grounding it all in a ribcage bass. He was the fifth and final sound, filling in an invisible but vivid picture. 

When he stopped singing, the room was still. There was fear in the air—fear of shattering something new that might one day be timeless. Jack had pushed the hair out of his eyes. Leo had taken off his hat, as though out of respect for what he’d just heard. Even Kyle and Ronan wore solemn expressions. They’d both stopped digging through the pantry for snacks. Their hands hung at their sides, their jaws were slack. A realization was dawning. 

Luna stood up from her place on the carpet beside Jack. She padded to the fridge in her newly stained slippers. It was barely eight in the morning, but she took out a bottle of champagne and popped it on the spot. 

“I’m sixteen,” said Ronan. 

“And I’m about to be rich,” said Luna as she passed him a coffee mug. She poured each of them a mug-full and took hers out to the back porch, wrapping her hands around it like it was hot coffee and not cold champagne. She passed Jack on the way to the sliding doors and patted him on the shoulder. 

“Spencer’s got the voice, Jack, but you’ve got  _ it _ .” 

Kyle was drinking champagne straight out of the bottle, and Leo had put the tulip back in his mouth. He was doing a solo tangle on the counter in his stocking feet. When he motioned for Jack to join him up there, Jack shook his head. He was too tall. He might hit his head on the light fixtures. Eventually, though, he had no choice. Leo wouldn’t drop his hands, and Jack, along with the rest of the boys, wanted the dance to continue. So he joined Leo on the counter, his bare feet cold against the granite. His curls barely brushed the glowing light bulbs, just enough to infuse the skin below with warmth, a taste of golden that paired nicely with the champagne. 

Luna was calling Peter from the balcony. Jack could tell from the way she smiled and buried her chin in the sleeve of her sweater. It didn’t make sense, the way this stiff man melted her every move into softness, but the effect was unmistakable. He got down and leaned against the counter, his arms folded tight against his chest. 

“You were right about them,” Jack read her lips. “They’re really gonna be something.” 

At first, Jack thought he’d been the only one to notice. He was grateful that Spencer was playing Kendrick Lamar over the bluetooth speakers, that Ronan tried to rap along without knowing any of the words, and that the whole scene was erupting into shouts and laughter. But he was wrong. Leo still had the tulip between his teeth and his body toward the chaos, but his eyes stared out toward the back deck. Luna’s profile stood out brown and ocean blue against the evergreens. He had made out her words, too. 

Jack spoke before Leo could have the chance. “She doesn’t know what she’s talking about. She’s Peter’s wife and she’s our babysitter. That’s it.”

Leo snorted. “Tell that to her three Grammys.” He was right. Luna had been a big deal in the 90s, and now she was a big deal as a producer. Still, her prediction felt too strong too soon. 

“The higher you climb, the longer the fall,” Jack said, half to himself and half to Leo, who crouched down on the counter, so close that Jack could smell the champagne on his breath. It was something his mother said—never to Jack, but to bald celebrities on magazine covers or distant relatives who died of drug overdoses. Sometimes she said it in reference to Jack’s father, though Jack didn’t know where his father had climbed or whether he had fallen yet. He didn’t know much about his father at all, just that he lived in a big house in Connecticut and sent a set of golf clubs for Jack’s thirteenth birthday that his mother insisted they donate to kids in need.  _ What needy kids are gonna play golf?  _ Jack had asked. His mother said they were doing it out of principle. That was the end of the conversation. That was also the last present Jack received from his father. 

“Well, that’s grim,” said Leo. When Jack didn’t reply, Leo stood up, ripped a petal from the tulip, and let it go. It sailed down and down and down, swaying from side to side like a sailboat in a gentle sea as it went, before landing softly on the kitchen tile. 

Leo smiled. “Falling can be beautiful.” 


	7. Spring 2012

Solitude quickly became sacred to Jack. From stadium concerts to TV interviews to nameless publicity advisors to paparazzi in the street, his thoughts didn’t belong to him anymore. His every move was packaged for consumption. People occupied the air around him like a kind of humidity. 

Leo, of course, didn’t count as people. He’d become an extension of Jack’s body and consciousness. Leo would hum the songs aloud that Jack had only been going over in his head. He’d put his head in his lap just as Jack was planning to reach for a blanket. They traded thoughts like t-shirts. They traded t-shirts like oxygen. 

The kiss didn’t change that. Jack worried it would, but Leo was true to his word. He went on as though all had been forgotten. He added milk to Jack’s cereal in the mornings and left lewd drawings on the bathroom mirror. But Jack couldn’t help but feel like there was a timer wedged somewhere between the floorboards of their tiny apartment, a timer that could go off at any minute and release a poison gas or trigger a deadly explosive. Regardless, despite Leo’s ease, Jack was tense. He was afraid of the day when Leo decided to stop forgetting. Mostly, though, he was afraid of himself. He stopped going near the stove where it had happened. He hadn’t eaten pasta for weeks, and he even moved the colander to the cupboard under the sink where Leo couldn’t find it. Jack willed himself to forget that it was there too, but everytime he rinsed a plate or washed his hands, something buzzed in his chest, something that might have been anger or anxiety, but might, too, have been something else. 

So, in the end, it was a relief when Leo stood in front of the TV and said, “I think we should throw a housewarming party.” 

“This isn’t a house,” said Jack, craning his neck to see a soccer game through the triangle formed by Leo’s hand on his hip. “And we’ve lived here for months. The place is sufficiently warm.” The New York winter, which to the two southern boys had felt endless and oppressive, had melted to spring. They were on a break from their world tour. A week earlier, they’d been in Rome. In another week, they’d be in Amsterdam. 

“Let’s invite the guys over.” Leo turned off the TV manually, and Jack let out a loud groan. On the verge of a smile, melodrama was all he could muster. 

“You say that like we’re on a sports team,” he said. 

“We’re kind of like a sports team.”

“We’re nothing like a sports team.” 

Leo shot an imaginary basketball into the air. Even Jack, who had never watched a full game of basketball in his life, knew that his form was offensive. “I’m basically LeBron James in skinny jeans.” 

“Basically,” Jack echoed. He walked to the fridge, but Leo beat him there. He handed Jack the jug of chocolate milk, even taking the time to remove the lid and smell it first. Sometimes mind reading was convenient. Jack took a swig, wiped his mouth, and said, “Okay.” 

Leo clapped his hands together. “Okay?”

“You heard me.”

“I thought this would take more convincing. I had plans. There was a slideshow presentation.” 

Jack passed the milk to Leo. He took a drink. 

“Just Spencer, Ronan, and Kyle,” said Jack. 

Leo nodded. “Just Spencer, Ronan, Kyle, and the Green Bay Packers.” 

Jack rolled his eyes. “They each have to bring food, too.”

“Like a potluck,” said Leo, putting the milk back in the fridge. Jack had moved to the other side of the kitchen, but then he found himself in front of the sink, so he moved back to the TV. The soccer game was over, so he just sat on the couch and opened a copy of  _ National Geographic.  _

“A pot what?” 

Now it was Leo’s turn to roll his eyes, but instead he smiled. “Sure, sweet Jackie. They each have to bring food.” He took the magazine from Jack, sat beside him on the couch, and began to read aloud. 

“ _ During the first three precious minutes of the universe, the light elements were born through Big Bang nucleosynthesis. _ ” It was an old issue. Jack had read the article before, or, rather, Leo had read it aloud to him before, but the words were comforting. He still didn’t know what nucleosynthesis was, but the syllables were nice. He opened his phone and tapped out the word in his notes app, sticking it on to the end of a long list of unfulfilled lyric ideas— _ mermaid necklace, a deaf cat meows, a bus stop with no benches.  _

Jack had only written one song for the band. It took him weeks to work up the courage to show it to Luna. She told him it was good, that he should play it for Peter. When he did, Peter only let him get through the first verse. 

“It’s good, Jack, but it’s not right for the band.” 

Jack was sitting cross-legged on the floor of Peter’s hotel room, a keyboard stretched out in front of him and plugged into the wall. All at once, Jack felt like a little kid playing with his toys. He thought of the train set his father had sent him for Christmas one year in elementary school. They made sounds and drove on their own. As it turned out, playing with them was something of a let down. Jack missed the effort of pushing wooden trains around himself, the joy of being both creator and god. 

“You haven’t heard the chorus yet,” Jack said. He was grateful his voice was hoarse from singing. Otherwise it would’ve come out with a childish quiver. 

“You just used the word ‘neurasthenia’ in a pop song. I don’t need to hear the chorus.” 

Peter ordered room service pizza as a consolation. 

“Careful, it’s hot,” he said as he handed it over to Jack along with a stack of napkins. Jack took it before he had the chance to feel embarrassed. It was plain cheese. He finished the whole thing. 

Kyle arrived first. He brought a six pack of beers and a Twix bar. 

Leo shook Kyle’s hand as though they were old pals meeting up at a high school reunion, as though the two hadn’t spent the past four months sleeping an arms length apart on a tour bus. It was all part of the production. They were adults. They could throw a potluck if they wanted. “When I said bring food, I meant to share,” said Leo. 

“There are  _ two  _ bars in here.” Kyle held up the package. “And I brought beer.”

Jack took a step back like the stuff was radioactive. “How did you get that?” 

Kyle had been waiting for the question. He let out a satisfied sigh. “The lady at the 7-Eleven was a fan.” Neither of them pressed, but he went on anyway. “I took a selfie with her. She said it was for her daughter, but I could tell she was lying.” 

“Alright, okay, she’s probably making out with her phone as we speak.” Leo took the six pack and shut the door behind Kyle. 

Jack straightened a placemat on the kitchen table. They’d been a gift from his mom. With their red trimming and shimmering snowflake pattern, they were meant for Christmas, not April potlucks, but Leo agreed they looked tasteful. They gave the place a shine. Jack topped it off with a vase of tulips. They were fake and the only ones he could find were pink instead of red, but Leo still remembered. 

The minute he saw them, he took one and put the stem between his teeth. 

Leo extended a hand to Jack. “May I have this dance, se ñ or?” He raised his voice two octaves and took up an accent that Jack couldn’t place, but that certainly had to be offensive to someone. The “guests'' would be arriving in less than an hour. Jack hadn’t showered yet. He hadn’t decided what to wear. Mostly, though, he hadn’t stopped thinking about pasta for weeks, and they stood only a few feet from the stove. 

“Se ñ or?” Leo took a step closer. 

“I hate you,” said Jack. He took Leo’s hand

“I love it when we play fight.” Leo pulled Jack close so they were chest to chest, and the two began to tango across the kitchen. Despite his “se ñ orita” voice, Leo took the lead. His hand was on Jack’s waist, while Jack’s finger pads barely brushed Leo’s shoulder. Jack was grateful when he steered them toward the living room and away from the stove. Jack let himself be led, let himself laugh. Eventually, he wriggled his way free. Leo returned to the stove. Jack took a shower. The hot water seared into the places on his back where Leo’s hands had lingered. He stayed there until the doorbell rang. His hair, a massive brown mop, was dripping wet when they met Kyle at the door. 

Leo had suspected they might have a “Twix and beer” situation, so there were enchiladas in the oven and cookie dough in the fridge. Leo, of course, had been the head chef, but Jack had helped—preheating the oven, rolling tortillas, that Leo inevitably had to re-roll. They’d prepared enough food to feed a dozen people, but for five teenage boys it turned out to be too little. 

Ronan brought a large order of fries from Five Guys (“What? It's a large _. _ ”) along with a bottle of wine. 

“This is high class,” said Leo, twisting the bottle in his hand. It had a silver label and cursive writing. The surface gleamed beneath the kitchen light fixtures, so red it was almost black. At first Jack thought of blood, but his mind quickly darted to ink as the bottle seemed to darken beneath Leo’s touch. Leo held the wine with ease, like there should’ve been a linen napkin draped across his forearm. He furrowed his brow too, and studied the label closely. If it hadn’t been for the cursing, Jack wouldn’t have recognized Leo in the scene at all. 

Ronan took his baseball cap off and set it on a lamp that was a hand-me-down from Leo’s sister. It had a lacy shade and hot pink base. Leo sent him a glare that said, “ _Does that look like a hat rack to you?_ ” Ronan picked up the hat and put it back on over his blonde hair. Then, he looked back down at the wine and smirked. “I asked the guy at the place for his most expensive red.”

“Shit,” Jack and Kyle said in unison. 

“Did you seduce him with your boy band charm?” Leo asked, glancing at Kyle. 

“I don’t know. Maybe.” Ronan shrugged. “I used a fake ID though.” 

Jack choked on a fry. “You can’t use a fake ID, Ronan.” 

“Why not?”

“Because you’re a famous person. That guy could’ve just googled you and found out how old you are.” 

“My  _ fake  _ ID doesn’t say my  _ real  _ name.” 

“Yeah, well, your  _ face  _ was on the cover of  _ Rolling Stone  _ last month.” 

Said face turned the same shade of pink as the lamp. “I see your point.” 

Leo saw the color in Ronan’s cheek and began a performance. At times like these, Leo’s extroversion was strategic. He not only drew attention toward himself, he drew it away from others. Sometimes the spotlight was searing. Leo could take the heat. 

“Jackie, my dear, fetch the wine glasses, would you?” He traded his tango persona for a 1950s businessman. That made Jack the pearl-wearing housewife, but he didn’t protest, mostly because he wanted to try the wine. 

“We should wait for Spencer,” Kyle called from the couch. He had his feet up on the coffee table, which Jack had polished that afternoon. His sneakers knocked over the stack of magazines Jack had straightened, too. They were now scattered across the wooden surface like a half-hearted vision board. 

Jack had forgotten about Spencer. It was like Leo occupied physical space in his brain. All those accents and dance moves and crude jokes and elegant surprises had risen to the outer walls until his head couldn’t take anything else. Still, Jack wondered with a hand to his temple, how had he forgotten Spencer? They’d gotten closer during the second tour. Spencer liked to spray paint, and Jack liked to hunt for quiet places that tended to be framed by empty walls. At first, it started as a kind of transaction. Jack found concrete basement corners and highway overpasses outside hotels for Spencer to transform, and Spencer let Jack stick around to watch. Eventually, though, the payment and product bled into one another. Spencer found places and texted Jack to show up at midnight. Jack took to swirling spray-paint spirals beside Spencer’s graffiti poetry. At first, they didn’t talk much, but eventually Jack worked up the courage to ask about the illegible lines Spencer scrawled on the walls with such precision. 

“These words are for me,” he told Jack. Spencer never called the verses poems. “No one else needs to read them. Not even you.” 

He didn’t say  _ see  _ though, and Jack felt honored to admire the beauty of the words, even if their letters were too tightly packed to understand. They were a spectacle to behold all on their own, a kind of dizzying geometric landscape. 

Jack, in return, explained his love of wandering. Spencer hadn’t asked, of course, but he listened with such intensity that Jack forgot he hadn’t. “I get it from my mom,” he said. “She moved around a lot as a kid, I guess, so she wanted our childhood, my sister’s and mine, to be really solid and stable. I lived in the same house my whole life. But she likes to wander around. She’s accustomed to it. So she took us on these adventures. That’s what she called them. We were always trying to find something, like a creek where we could catch frogs or a gas station that sold a certain flavor of a certain energy drink. It was never something my mom actually wanted and it was always something different. Sometimes we found the thing, sometimes we didn’t, but it was never about finding.” 

“It was about the seeking,” said Spencer. It was the first time he’d spoken without Jack asking a question, though the hissing stream of the spraypaint can didn’t cease. 

“Yeah,” said Jack. “Exactly.” 

Spencer nodded and finished his line. They walked back to the tour bus in silence, but the next night, hunched between the trash cans of a Toronto alleyway in the dead of winter, Spencer started talking. 

“The second my parents found out I could sing, they started filming me all the time. They’d post videos on YouTube. That’s how Peter found me. Whenever they had friends over, they made me stand on the stairs and sing for them all. 

“Like the Von Trapps,” said Jack. Spencer didn’t laugh. Jack worried he’d ruined something that had never happened before and would never happen again. Spencer went back to his work in silence. More and more lately, Jack could make out a word here and there. It was like he was slowly cracking the code, gaining a unique find of fluency. This time, he read “ _ imprisoned _ ” in dark green. Spencer underlined another word Jack couldn’t make out, and then he spoke again, as though Jack hadn’t said anything at all. 

“All of a sudden I had value to them because I was good at something.” Spencer stood up and threw an empty can of paint at the wall. It bounced off with a metallic thud and rolled to a stop at the toe of Jack’s sneaker. “I like that it doesn’t matter if I’m good at this or not.” 

“For what it’s worth, I think you are good at it.” 

Jack watched another milestone burst forth when Spencer smiled. “Don’t ruin it,” he said. He punched Jack in the arm. Over his shoulder, Jack made out another word on the wall: 

_ Brother.  _

Spencer showed up late, but he brought food. In fact, he brought a steaming, homemade meal. An hour after Jack put away the wine glasses and closed the cabinets, after Ronan ate a tray of raw cookie dough, and after Kyle set up a game of beer pong which everyone else refused to play, Spencer showed up with three tin foil trays stacked in his arms. 

“You are an angel sent from heaven above,” said Leo when he swung open the door. 

“Are you gonna help me with these or am I gonna drop them on your mom’s throw rug?” Jack swept in to take one of the trays. Leo took another, and the three of them laid out the meal on the counter where the enchiladas sat getting cold. They’d already gone through two bags of tri-colored tortilla chips, but Leo had hidden some away under the sink. 

“Alright, you got your fried chicken, you got your mashed potatoes, you got your green beans, and you got your cornbread.” Spencer pointed to each dish with a confidence Jack had only seen in him before onstage. He rubbed his palms together, too, and grinned a proud grin. 

“You did not make all this,” said Leo, his eyes wide. 

“I did  _ not  _ spend five hours on this home-cooked meal for you to doubt my labors.” 

“Spence,” said Ronan. “I take back every time I’ve ever said anything mean to you ever.” He’d wandered in from the living room and now hovered over the counter, somehow still ravenous. He had a chocolate chip stuck to his lip, but no one had told him yet, and the situation had descended into an unspoken stalemate. 

“Thank you,” Jack said to Spencer when they all were elbowing for plates and silverware. Spencer nodded with an almost imperceptible smile. 

They ate on the carpet. Ever since that first night of chili at Peter and Luna’s cabin, it had become something of a tradition. Leo insisted they use the placemats, not because he had any attachment to them, but because he caught a glimpse of Jack staring at them on the table—arranged and untouched. 

“Let’s not be animals,” he said as he passed them out like playing cards. Meanwhile, Jack poured the wine into the fancy glasses they’d bought at a thrift store and assumed they’d never use. Ronan held his with two hands like a crystal ball. Kyle downed his like a shot. Spencer didn’t want any wine, so Jack poured a glass for both him and Leo last. Leo sipped his wine slowly over the course of the evening, a motion so refined and effortless that Jack didn’t touch his glass for the first few minutes, so preoccupied with Leo’s every move. Only once the wine had grown warm did he begin to take greedy swigs. 

Jack was pleased. They all were. The place did feel warmer, partly because of the oven and the bodies, but there was something more too, something Jack owed to the sense of completeness now that Spencer had arrived and, on a more intimate level, to the way Leo turned toward him at the end of every joke, as though Jack’s reaction were the most important of all.

Together, the warmth and the wine loosened Jack. All at once, it dawned on him that these were his closest friends. These were the only other people in the world who truly understood what he was going through—the fame, the money, the gossip, the pressure—the five of them were in it as a team. In the eyes of the world, they were five limbs of one being. It was this realization that broke down the dam in Jack’s throat, so that when Kyle asked a question of the group, Jack decided to be the first to respond. 

“Who’s the hottest fan you’ve ever met?” he asked. They were all sprawled on the carpet amongst empty plates and crumb-covered placemats. Leo had put on jazz music. He had been listening with his eyes closed until Kyle spoke up. Then, he looked to Jack, because he’d been looking to Jack all evening. For the first time, though, instead of smiling back with tight lips or digging his hands into his pockets, Jack spoke. 

“Mexico City,” he said. He put his hands out as though framing the Plaza de Zócalo in his mind. Out of the corner of his eye, Jack watched Leo take a sip of his wine. He was stifling something, though Jack couldn’t tell what. 

Ronan laughed. “When did you meet a girl in Mexico? They hardly let us leave our hotel rooms.” 

“Wasn’t a girl,” said Jack. The jazz kept playing, but everything else shifted—Ronan dropped his smile onto the carpet, Kyle stopped drumming the floor along to the music, and Leo took a long sip. Only Spencer remained unfazed. He stared straight ahead, studying a flower embroidered onto a throw pillow. When no one spoke up, Jack went on. “He worked at the hotel. He was the room service guy, but he still counts as a fan because he asked me for an autograph. I signed a cloth napkin for him. God, that guy had an ass.” 

Leo choked on his wine. 

Spencer cleared his throat and said, “A girl came up to me in Walmart last week with the biggest tits I’d ever seen.” 

The conversation started back up again slowly. Kyle told a story about a girl he’d gotten to third base with at a VMAs after party. Ronan had run into the hottest girl from his high school class backstage at a concert. Jack, taking a shot at redemption, told about a supermodel he’d made out with at a nightclub in Chicago. Spencer nodded to confirm the story, but it wasn’t enough. Jack still felt his cheeks burning. When it was Leo’s turn, he just shrugged. 

“I’ve got nothing,” he said. “Jack’s the heartthrob.” He was right. The boys met the comment with jeers and shoulder punches, but they were half-hearted. Even the supermodel story couldn’t erase Mexico City. 

Somehow they got around to whether or not they would fuck Tess, their stylist, and the vote was split. When the group turned to Leo to break the tie, he just shook his head and strode to the kitchen. 

“Jack, help me check the cookies, will you?” 

Jack was slumped on the couch with a pillow clutched to his chest. Every once in a while he murmured something about needing to go to bed, but all the boys knew he was a night owl, and they all saw the way his posture had collapsed in minutes. He’d agreed he would have sex with Tess because he hadn’t really considered the question, only watched Kyle and Ronan raise their hands about something and followed suit. When Leo raised an eyebrow, he had pretended to pick at a loose thread on the pillow. 

“Why do you need help checking the cookies?” Jack asked softly. It was useless, though. The others were all listening. They’d been watching Jack closely since his story about Mexico City. Jack would’ve retreated to his room, but he decided that would be worse. Then they’d have space to talk about what he’d said. This way, maybe they could just move on. Maybe it wouldn’t be a big deal. 

“I want to make sure they’re the way you like them,” said Leo. 

“They’re cookies. I’m gonna like them.”

Leo, standing in front of the couch, put his head in Jack’s lap and tried to swing him over his shoulder. It was pointless. Jack had four inches and thirty pounds on Leo. They were the shortest and tallest members of a boy band that was supposed to appear uniform. Peter told Jack to slouch, and Tess gave Leo inserts to put in his shoes. Slightly buzzed and barefooted, though, show inserts couldn’t do anything to help Leo now. 

It worked though. “I’m coming, I’m coming,” said Jack. The conversation shifted back to the girl from Ronan’s high school, who apparently liked Jack the best, but still gave Ronan a handjob in the lighting booth that night. After Tess, they didn’t move to talking about Luna. She was sacred, and not just because she was Peter’s wife. Luna wasn’t the kind of woman you fantasized about. She couldn’t be contained by dreams. Jack had tried to capture moments when Luna put her hand on his shoulder or whispered something in his ear, but they never felt the same in recollection. Jack was  _ extremely  _ attracted to Luna, but he didn’t have a crush on her. Such a term was too trivial, and such a desire was too far-fetched. In another life, he told himself, he could love Luna and she could love him back. 

Leo was different. 

Jack followed Leo into the kitchen. He knew this wasn’t about the cookies, but he peered into the oven anyway. 

“They’re not ready yet,” he said. 

Leo looked inside. “I think they look about done. Everyone likes them a little soft.”

“Just like your mushy pasta.” Jack said it under his breath before he could stop himself. He studied Leo’s expression in the oven’s dark reflection—There wasn’t anger there, or surprise, or even fear. All his features had softened. The corners of his mouth were turned downward, but his eyes were lit up against the black surface. Even their reflection seemed impossibly blue. Something was cracking open. 

“I didn’t know,” he said. “I thought it was just a mistake or something.”

“Well, now you know.” 

Jack opened the oven before Leo could say anything more. He didn’t want to be thanked or comforted. He wasn’t even sure what he had just admitted. Leo just stood there, staring into an oven which was now empty and exhaling oppressive heat onto his face. 

“Cookies!” Jack called into the living room. Kyle, Ronan, and Spencer scrambled into the kitchen. They burned their tongues, but they did it with orgasmic expressions. 

“These are incredible, Leo,” said Ronan as he reached for his third. 

Leo gave a tight-lipped smile. “Thanks.” He turned to Jack, who was leaning against the fridge with his fists dug into the pockets of his sweatshirt. “Aren’t you gonna try one, Jack?” 

He shook his head, but didn’t meet Leo’s gaze. “ I don’t like them soft.” 

“Well,” said Leo. “Now I know.” 


	8. Spring 2012

A week after the housewarming party, they were in Amsterdam. It was too early for tulips, but the trees were beginning to flower and the canals reflected pale pinks along with crooked row houses on its surface. Before the band, Jack had never left Virginia. Now, he was in his fifth country in less than a month. Travelling was new to Leo, too, but he had a way of making everything seem natural to him. He slept through his first plane ride from takeoff to touchdown. He held out his microphone to the audience in the middle of their first show, long before anyone knew the words to their songs. The only part of Amsterdam he let himself swoon over were the flowering trees. 

“I want to see petals raining down like confetti,” he announced in the car from the airport, his elbows on the seat in front of him and his chin resting there while they bounced over potholes. The other boys made fun of him, but he insisted with a shaking fist—“Confetti!” Spencer put on his headphones. Ronan threw back his head in laughter. Kyle rolled his eyes. Jack smiled at the window, even then afraid that his own reflection might reveal his happiness to the others. 

He pictured confetti all the way to the hotel. 

Two hours before their first show, Jack stumbled across a brick wall intersected with, but not obscured by, thick vines with shining leaves. Once a rare occurrence, it seemed that every other week a room closed in on Jack, its air too thick to breathe, its ceiling too low to stand upright. The wall helped make up an alley in the Red-light District. The spot was close enough to the street that Jack could count all five fingers in front of his face, but far enough from it that no one would have been able to make out his face through the darkness. 

He texted Spencer. 

“This is cutting it close,” he said, already arranging his emergency paint cans on the concrete. 

Jack leaned up against the vines. He thought of poison oak and hikes with his mom through the woods behind their neighborhood back home. He thought of city drains that looked like dragon mouths and creeks that made sound all through the night even days after it rained. “I thought this wall was worth it.”

“You thought right,” said Spencer. He slashed a line across the vines in dark blue. “This one’s definitely worth it.” 

Jack watched. He held up his phone flashlight so Spencer could see, though it was rendered obsolete in periodic flashes as taxis rolled past and slid their slanted high beams across the wall. At first, with all the blue, Jack thought Spencer was drawing an ocean, but then he saw it was something more like a face behind bars—bars forged of paint and vines. It scared Jack that he saw himself in the green eyes and wavy hair, even in the long fingers that clawed at the restraints and the ever-narrowing frame Spencer looped around the whole thing again and again with his whole arm windmilling as paint spewed out of the cans. 

“I thought you might like this one,” Spencer said after a while. 

“You thought right,” Jack said quietly. He checked his phone to have something to look at besides his shoes and the painted wall. The opening act would be halfway through their set. They probably had twenty minutes. Jack had three missed calls from Luna and four from Leo, who only opened his phone for two reasons: music and emergencies. Jack slid his phone back into his pocket. “We should go.”

Spencer nodded and started to put the cans back in the backpack he had taken to wearing around like a life vest, but then he stopped. He took out a can of red paint and handed it to Jack. 

“It’s not finished yet,” he said with his arm outstretched. “Add something.”

Jack surprised himself by taking it and pulling off the lid, letting it drop to the concrete with a hollow rattle. He wasn’t sure what Spencer wanted, and he was too afraid to ask. The only hint he had was the color of the can. It felt right to him, but he couldn’t imagine how it could feel right to Spencer. Still, he did what his hands and chest insisted he do. He added a heart beneath the face, low down on the wall where its chest should’ve been, overlaying the bars like they were made of nothing. Over the prison he added a kindergarten heart. 

He must’ve pressed down too hard on the can because the paint dripped down in streaks and onto the pavement below. The red pooled there until Jack smeared it with his toe. 

At this final gesture, Spencer nodded his approval. 

“Let’s go,” he said, and the two of them reappeared out of the almost dark. 

Leo wanted to know where Jack had been the night before. But Jack wouldn’t tell him where he’d disappeared to. He’d waited in the wings before the show, and in the car back to the hotel, and in the hallway outside their rooms across the hall, and through a buffet breakfast at a restaurant with a name none of the boys could pronounce. He told himself his silence was for Spencer’s sake, that his hobby was special for its secrecy, but the image of that blue face behind green bars with its dripping red heart pulsed at the back of Jack’s mind. Through their morning of freedom, he let it pulse there. He stayed silent. 

A radio host got sick with the flu, and suddenly their afternoon was open wide. Peter tried to hold Jack and Spencer back, a kind of grounding for their disappearance the night before, but Luna put her hand on his arm, and that soft touch was all it took. He relented. Spencer was in good spirits. He left his backpack at the hotel and walked between Kyle and Ronan, pointing out buildings with lopsided windows and canal boats with algaed underbellies. 

“People dump all kinds of shit in these canals,” he said, peering over the railing of a bridge covered in bike locks. 

“Old bicycles, I bet,” said Ronan. He wandered dangerously close to the edge until Spencer pulled him back by the arm. 

“Dead bodies,” said Leo. He was still in a bad mood. Jack pulled him aside. They dodged a few cyclists and made it to the opposite side of the street. 

“Van Gogh,” said Jack. Leo frowned. “Let’s go to the Van Gogh Museum. I know you’ve always wanted to.” Leo glanced back at the group. Kyle had pulled out a map and they were studying it upside-down. “Just us,” said Jack. “They’d hate it anyway.” He knew it was a lie. Spencer would’ve loved it, but he would take pictures and show them to him later. 

“We don’t have tickets,” said Leo. 

“We’re famous!” said Jack, stretching his arms out wide. It was the first time he’s said it aloud. People passing by turned to look at the curly-haired boy shouting on the sidewalk. They didn’t help his point by shaking their heads and continuing on their ways. Leo, too, strode away. “Where are you going?” Jack called after him. 

Leo turned, grinned, and jumped in the air to click his heels together. When he landed, he shouted back, “Van Gogh.” 

The museum was crowded, but Jack had been right. One of the guards recognized them. He was a burly guy with a thick beard and belly that protruded out over his belt. 

“My daughter is a huge fan,” he said with red cheeks. They made a video for his daughter and the guard led them into the exhibit through a back hallway. “Enjoy,” he added in his thick Dutch accent. 

Leo shook his head and smiled. Jack shrugged. 

“We’re famous.” 

It was the slowest afternoon Jack had ever spent with Leo. They had four hours to burn, and Jack felt his insides glow with the warmth of each lazy minute. They stood in front of the irises for ten and the sunflowers for twenty. As sunlight drained out of the gallery and the space emptied of noisy tour groups, they took a full hour to gaze upon a self portrait. It was quiet among the young couples passing through holding hands and old folks with oversized cameras swinging from their necks. The evening crowd was in no rush. They treaded lightly. 

“I wish I could see myself like that,” said Leo. Jack’s legs were beginning to go numb, but he refused to cut anything short, to leave Leo as he had the night before. 

“Look in more mirrors,” Jack suggested. 

“It’s not about how he looks, though. I know how I look. I’ve sat through enough blowouts in front of dressing room mirrors, Jack.” He stretched his hand out toward the painting, stopping short of the velvet rope the thing had sent up a force field. “This is a man who knows how he  _ feels _ .” 

It occurred to Jack that he’s spent the past half hour listening to Leo’s breathing and tracking everytime he shifted his weight from one foot to the other, savoring glimpses of movement in the corner of his eye. Now, though, he tilted his head to study the canvas in front of which he’d spent so much time studying something else. 

_ Oil on canvas _ , the label read, but the image reminded Jack of spray paint on an alley wall. It was more about the background than the face—swirling blues coming up out of everywhere and disappearing out of the frame. Van Gogh’s blue shirt was the same pale teal as the background, and the effect was a kind of imprisonment. The background dragged him into the foreground and held him there with twisted fingers. There was no need for bars. No, it was clear the subject couldn’t move. His shoulders melded with the air, swaying constantly even in its century-long stillness, his jaw was locked, his eyes cried out. 

“How do you think you feel?” Jack asked. When Leo didn’t answer, Jack turned toward him. 

“Oh.” He gave a bounce on the balls of his feet. “I thought you were talking to Vince.” 

“I don’t think he’s very talkative.” Jack turned to the painted, as though to inquire. Sure enough, Van Gogh gave no reply. When Leo didn’t speak either, Jack said, “I feel a little trapped, to be honest.” 

Jack didn’t dare look toward Leo. Through the corner of his eyes, he could see that he had stopped bouncing. His head didn’t sway an inch. Was he captivated by the painting again? Or was he considering something? Jack took a step toward the next painting, but Leo pulled him back. He laced his fingers through Jack’s, which was an odd tactic, but Jack figured he wasn’t done yet and the gesture had been half-conscious. But he didn’t unlace his fingers. He held Jack’s hand firmly, deliberately. A few tourists stood beside them to admire the painting, snapped photos of the canvas before wandering away. No one stopped to look at the two boys holding hands. No one so much as batted an eye. It was a miracle, Jack thought to himself, that they hadn’t noticed the deafening pounding in his chest that filled his ears and burned in his throat. 

Finally, Leo looked away from the canvas with an answer.

“I feel free,” he said. 

They bought a poster from the gift shop, thinking it was the cherry blossoms, but, when they took it out of the box, it turned out to be a skeleton with a cigarette hanging from its mouth. Leo unrolled it like an ancient scroll in the street. Rain dotted the glossy surface. Jack thought it had been evening erasing the glow from the gallery, but really it had been swirling dark clouds. 

“Is this a bad omen?” said Leo. 

“No,” Jack said, more quickly than he’d wanted to. 

“Alright, it’s settled then.” Leo hugged the poster to his chest, folding the edges. Jack cringed, not at the volume of Leo’s voice cutting through the crowd, but at something perfect, even if it had been wrong, being irreversibly mutilated. “It’s a good omen.” 

“What are we going to do with it?” Jack asked. The paper was already growing soggy. He could make out the silhouette of Leo’s hand behind the skull’s outline. 

“We’ll keep it as a memory.”

It was almost ruined by now. Leo peeled off a strip from top to bottom and handed the streamer to Jack, then he tore off one for himself. Jack watched as he carefully folded the paper into a wad, and slipped it into his back pocket. He followed suit. 

Leo checked his watch. 

“We’re on in two hours,” he said. 

“We should—” Jack started to say, but Leo took a step closer and there was no more air on the street. He wondered how the other pedestrians were possibly breathing. There were raindrops, but there was no atmosphere. Leo was an inch shorter, so he had to jut his chin up to stand eye to eye with Jack. He raised a hand, and, for a moment, Jack thought he was about to be struck. He blinked, but then he felt Leo tucking a curl behind his ear, something only his mother had ever done before. 

“Two hours,” Leo repeated. He broke hold of Jack’s gaze and his eyes fell on the canal, dotted now with murky bullseyes. “Just enough time for a boat ride.” 

They convinced a man named Milan to take them out in the rain. He was tall and old and barely spoke English, but he had a kind face and a boat with padded seats and a bowl of strawberry candies on a table at the center. He passed them each a plastic rain poncho as they stepped into the boat. 

“Aren’t you going to wear one?” Leo asked. Though he wore a broad-brimmed hat, Milan had no jacket, only a white cotton t-shirt which was nearly soaked through. 

He shook his head. “I like the rain,” was all he said before turning to the wheel. 

“I like the rain too,” Jack said and set the poncho on the floor. Leo shook his head, but did the same. By the time the boat peeled away from the sidewalk, they were drenched and one with the canal. 

“You were so pissed off when Spencer and I were late last night,” Jack said over his shoulder with one hand in the water. 

“I wasn’t pissed off because you were late. I was pissed off because I was on time.”

Leo was waving at a boat passing by. The man at the wheel said something in Dutch, to which Leo responded by spouting gibberish. It was wildly disrespectful, but Jack was charmed to the point of giggling. Milan turned pointed to a basket beneath the seats. It was full of cheese sandwiches that were flavorful, if soggy. 

“I love moist bread,” was Leo’s review. He ate four. Jack just laughed and took another bite. At eighteen, he was always hungry. His stomach was a bottomless void. His joints ached with growing pains in his bed at night. Those cheese sandwiches tasted like soggy ambrosia. It was golden nectar. It was Leo in a sandwich. 

Leo waited until they passed under a bridge to leap across to Jack’s side of the boat. He knocked over the empty basket. Jack watched as crumbs fell between the white leather cushion. When he reached down to pick up the basket and wipe them away, Leo grabbed him from behind. He didn’t stop him exactly. Jack was stronger and taller. He could’ve brushed Leo off, but he didn’t, and so Leo stayed there, his face buried in Jack’s soaked sweater. His arms were wrapped around Jack’s chest, his hands knotted together at the center like a shining bow. They emerged from the black of the bridge and into the gray of the evening still intertwined. Jack wanted to turn around, but he didn’t want to untie the knot Leo had tied either, the pressure point that tethered them together. 

“Can you see?” Jack whispered, liking the luxury of Leo’s closeness. When their bodies were like this, almost one, he didn’t have to use his voice at all. He spoke with breath alone. “They put lights in the trees.” 

“Do you think they’re for us?” Leo asked with exaggerated, childlike wonder. The trees were green, but they were rendered artificially golden. Mixed with the rain, the effect on the water’s surface was that of twinkling stars. 

“I know you wanted to see the pink ones,” said Jack. “It’s like the skeleton all over again.” 

Leo laughed and Jack felt the vibration run through his spine. 

“But there’s rain, which is a kind of confetti,” said Leo. “And there’s you, which is a kind of artwork.” 

The boat was swaying as the wind picked up, but Jack didn’t dare move. He bent his knees and gripped the side. Leo held on tighter. 

“Turn around,” said Leo. Still, Jack didn’t move. They were approaching the dock where they’d started. Jack half expected to see Peter looming there with his arms crossed, but the cobblestone streets were clearing out as the rain came down harder. “Will you turn around?” Leo said, and something about the way he had  _ asked  _ made Jack turn. 

“You kissed me,” said Leo. “You kissed me, and I let you pretend like it never happened.” Jack shook his head. He wasn’t sure what he was saying no to. He wasn’t sure why his hands were trembling and why he couldn’t step back from Leo, who stood inches from him. He had his hood pulled over his head and he looked ridiculous, like an elf or a troll. Jack laughed because his chest demanded he feel something. 

“Do you want to keep pretending it didn’t happen?” 

Though the question had changed, Jack shook his head again, and beads of water flew off into the air. One of them landed on Leo’s cheek. Jack brushed it away. It felt so ordinary to touch him there that he wondered why he didn’t do it more often. It felt ordinary like the kiss had felt, like looking at a painting or testing pasta. 

“Then let’s stop pretending it didn’t happen,” said Leo. 

Only when the boat jerked to the side did Jack realize they were docked again. When Milan turned back, Jack and Leo pulled themselves apart, but the man only shook his head and smiled. 

“ _ Liefde is gewoon liefde. Er is geen verklaring voor, _ ” he said. When Jack and Leo just stared, still pinned to opposite sides of the boat, he translated. “Love is just love. It can never be explained.” 

Standing on the cobblestones after parting ways with Milan, dripping wet and full to bursting with cheese sandwiches, they had twenty minutes to get onstage. Leo was crying. Jack was laughing. He called Luna and had her send over a car. They made it on time, though their hair wasn’t as stiff as usual.

Tess was displeased. 

“You seem awfully happy,” she shouted over the roar of a hair dryer and the jangle of her bracelets. 

“I do not,” said Jack, though he couldn’t manage to make his dimple disappear. Leo was sitting on the table in front of them making faces, his hair still dripping. Tess looked from Leo to Jack and back again. The hair dryer was still blowing, but her bracelets weren’t jangling anyway. 

“Oh my-” she brought a free hand to her mouth. “That’s just-”

“What?” Jack craned his neck to look at her because he couldn't trust what he saw in the mirror—Tess’s eyes brimming with tears. 

“I’m just happy, too,” she said. “That’s all.” 

Leo and Jack didn’t say anything, but they both nodded a silent thank you. Leo stayed put on the table, his feet brushing Jack’s knees. Tess’s words sealed what would become a nightly ritual. 

After the first song, Jack caught Leo’s gaze and nodded. When Leo furrowed his brow, Jack crossed the stage, scuffing his shoe on the duct-tape ex that demanded he be still. Jack pointed his mic towards the ground during the deafening applause. “Okay,” he whispered in Leo’s ear. He swore he could taste traces of rain there. “Let’s stop pretending.” 

Jack did exactly as Leo said. He waited until two in the morning, he left his phone in the room, and he slipped down the hallway with his feet jammed into his sneakers. He didn’t knock on the door, but just waited there, staring down at the carpet’s swirling pattern. 

Then Kyle appeared. Jack could tell from the way he hummed to himself that he was drunk. 

Jack looked down at his cable knit sweater. It had been a gift from his sister. It was the most expensive thing he owned, though he saved it for nighttime when no one could tell him it was too warm for April or too feminine for a boy band heartthrob. “I have to give Leo his sweater,” Jack blurted out, though no one had asked a question. 

“The sweater you’re currently wearing?” Kyle’s speech came out clear. He was drunk, but not drunk enough. 

“I got cold on the way here.” 

Kyle glanced down the hallway at Jack’s door, which was mere feet from Leo’s. 

When Leo opened the door a crack, Jack slammed it shut. 

“Weird hinges,” said Jack. Kyle looked at the door, looked at Jack, and then let out a long sigh. 

“I’m deciding that I’m too drunk to deal with this,” he said, and then disappeared into his room across the hall. A few seconds later, Leo opened his door again. 

“Peephole!” Jack shouted as Leo pulled him into the room. All the lights were turned on and the floor was strewn with overdue books from the New York Public Library. 

“My bad,” Leo said. He stepped over a page that showed a diagram of the inside of a frog. Unlike the rest of the boys, Leo was panicked about not having graduated high school. As the oldest, he’d gotten the farthest of all of them, but even still, he’s stopped six months short of a diploma. Now, he was taking his education into his own hands. “I’ve been reading.” 

“I see that.” 

Leo gave a lecture about the ethics of frog dissection while Jack leaned nervously against the TV stand, tapping his knuckles on the glass. But his true fear only kicked in when Leo closed the books, stacked them into a tall pile, and buried them back inside his suitcase. He clapped his hands together. 

“Well, we got that out of the way.” 

“I was worried about the frog dissection part,” said Jack. 

At first, Jack thought that Leo was breaking out into hives. He took a step closer to where he stood across the room before he noticed that, no, Leo was just blushing. Leo—the epitome of security and carefree galavanting—was blushing. Like with the raindrops, Jack put his hand to Leo’s cheek to try to wipe the irregularity off of his smooth skin. 

Leo turned his head slightly, but didn’t pull away. “I’ve never—”

“Me neither.”

Their voices were barely whispers. “Well, I mean with girls—”

“Yeah, me too. 

“But never—” 

“That’s okay.” After two years of being talked over, it felt good to finish Leo’s sentences. Though he was younger and quieter, he was less afraid now. And though he’d kissed Leo once before in front of the stove, he vowed this time would be different. He painted intention across his features with deliberate brush strokes. He kept one hand on Leo’s cheek and held Leo’s hand with the other. His eyes narrowed and widened again as the full effect of Leo came into focus. Jack let it wash over him, and he waited for his own radiating certainty to wash over Leo, who gave the slightest nod as Jack tilted his head and leaned forward. 

He was grateful that Leo met him there in the middle, in that space between them that had been vibrating with life for two years now. Leo’s mouth was just as he remembered it—soft but unrelenting, gentle but certain. They resided there in the middle until it was obliterated, until there was no Jack or Leo but only their intertwinedness, their sacred connections of palm to palm, hand to cheek, lips to lips, fingertips to hip. It’s like we’re dancing, was the only thought Jack could muster, as Leo poured over him in selfless gallons. 

When Jack woke up the next morning, Leo was wearing his cable knit sweater. Jack tugged at the sleeve. It was too long and Leo had draped the extra length over his eyes. 

“I was cold,” Leo mumbled. 

“I was spooning you,” said Jack. 

“You rolled away when you fell asleep, but you looked so peaceful. I didn’t want to wake you.” 

Jack smiled and reached for his glasses on the bedside table. He could see Leo beside him, but his edges were blurry. 

“Clark Kent,” Leo murmured and ran his finger along the edge of one of the lenses.  _ There’ll be a smudge there,  _ Jack thought to himself, only it was a happy thought. He’d be glad to have Leo blot out a piece of his vision. 

They lay there for a while, Leo’s head in Jack’s lap. Through a strip between the curtains, Jack could just glimpse the orange dawn reflected in the canal. He pointed. Leo looked and gave a soft  _ hmm _ . It enchanted Jack more than any note he had ever sung. Leaning down, he dug his face into Leo’s chest. Already, the sweater smelled like Leo. His clean pine had erased every last trace of Jack’s overpriced cologne. 

“Keep it,” said Jack. “I told Kyle it was yours anyway.” 

He sat up against the headboard and pulled Leo toward him. He’d never realized before how small Leo was, how moveable despite his unmovable air. As though he’d sensed the thought, Leo shifted away. He stood up and walked toward the closet. His boxer shorts just barely peeked out beneath the oversized sweater. Leo pulled one of his own sweaters off a hanger—he was always one to hang clothes even if they were only staying for a night—and tossed it to Jack. 

“We’ll do a trade,” he said. Jack pulled the sweater over his head. It was the same green as Jack’s eyes. 

“Meant to be,” he said, and Leo must have known just what he was referring to because he touched the fabric stretched over Jack’s broad shoulders, and then looked down into Jack’s eyes. They held each other there, touching only at the kneecaps, as the canal’s surface awakened from orange to yellow to the palest of blues. 

Touring had always exhausted Jack until Amsterdam. After that city, every one that followed came alive. Whenever they got the chance, the two of them slipped away from the group to explore something new—whether idling for hours behind the velvet ropes of art museums or pressing against each other in a hotel bed. Every new place came to represent not the show they’d played or the fans they’d met, but the new side of Leo that Jack had discovered there—his love for mythology in Rome, the ticklish place behind his ears in Sydney, the way he hugged his little sister in Houston. He was touring not the world, but Leo, and he didn’t want it to end. 

Eventually, though, they ran out of stadiums. They’re songs grew worn from overuse. The band took a break from touring to record their new album. Jack and Leo fell into their old routines back at the apartment, only things were different now. There was no Jack’s room and Leo’s room, there was only shared space and the empty spaces in between which felt increasingly like nuisances. They ate dinner cross legged on the countertop with knees touching. The first time Leo hopped into the shower with Jack, he’d nearly bludgeoned him with a shampoo bottle, but even that now felt blissfully normal. 

There were close calls. In those early months, Leo was bolder than Jack, especially as Peter got busy and chaperoned fewer and fewer of their interviews. Peter had promised to make it to a live talk show in New York, but something came up at the last minute—an angry singer or an angry investor or an angry Luna—Jack couldn't remember which, but it didn’t matter. He sat next to Leo on a bright orange couch that was softer than it looked. Leo was restless while a woman with stiff blonde hair and false eyelashes asked them question after question about nothing at all. He rested his hand along the couch behind Jack, reaching closer and closer until his arm wasn’t on the couch at all anymore, but resting on Jack’s shoulder. It amused Jack to watch the woman’s eyes grow wider and wider as he leaned back and back into Leo’s chest. She glanced from the blinking red light to the two boys in front of her and back again, a silent plea that neither obeyed. Kyle cleared his throat, but Jack didn’t look. 

“You two are very close friends, I see,” the interviewer finally said. 

“They’re everyone’s favorite bromance,” said Kyle, laughing nervously. 

“I wish I had that,” said Ronan. He rested his head on Spencer’s shoulder, and the tension resolved. Jack gave them both a look that said  _ thank you,  _ though part of him regretted it. That look was a surrender.  _ Thank you for making a joke of who I love _ . But, of course, they couldn’t, or wouldn’t, see what was there before their eyes, what was blossoming between their two bandmates, for it was dangerous to see such things. Better to laugh. Better to look away. 

That night, Jack put on his glasses before bed and noticed a fingerprint at the bottom of one of the lenses. It was still there, a memory from a morning Amsterdam. He didn’t wipe it away. While brushing his teeth, he looked at himself in the mirror through the smudge, blurred but still there, scrambled but not erased. 

When he leaned down to spit, his phone rang out with text from Peter. At the same instant, he heard Leo’s phone go off in the other room. 

“What are the odds,” Leo called from the kitchen. “He’s probably just congratulating us on a fantastic interview.” 

Before Jack could read the text, Leo had batted the phone from his hand and dove onto the couch. He straddled Jack, and though he meant the moment to be serious, Jack couldn’t help but laugh. 

“You’re adorable,” he said into Leo’s neck as they met each other in the middle, Jack leaning up and Leo leaning down. 

“Funny how people from Virginia pronounce sexy.” 

Jack dragged his finger from Leo’s neck to his chest and back up to his cheek, tracing his favorite lines that he’d finally memorized by both sight and feel. “You’re adorably sexy,” he said. But what he thought was  _ I love you. I love you. I love you. _


	9. Winter 2013

Loving Leo, even if he never said the words, became so normal to Jack that the feelings no longer stewed in him like a foul secret. For months, he stared at Leo during interviews. He held his hand on the tour bus. He sat cross-legged on the floor beside his chair while Tess did his hair. Leo, meanwhile, did the same. If the other boys noticed, they chose not to show it. Though they never spoke the words, it felt real to Jack. Despite all the glee and giggling, it felt like the most grown-up thing he owned, and he held every memory and glimpse sacred. After almost a year, though, he regretted the lack of words, of labels, of spoken promises. There was nothing solid tethering them together. The slightest breeze threatened to blow them apart at any instant. 

“Do you think the other guys know?” Jack asked Leo one morning in the bathroom mirror. It had been six months since their last tour ended, nine months since Amsterdam. They were performing at Madison Square Garden that night—a set of mostly old songs that would end with their latest single. It wasn’t part of a tour, just one show that had sold out in under ten seconds. 

“Know what?” 

“Know that we’re—” Jack pointed from his chest to Leo’s and back again. 

Leo shook his head. “They have no clue.” He spat into the sink and wiped his face with Jack’s towel. “And what’s to know?” A knot tightened in Jack’s throat. He wiped his face with the same towel, though nothing was there to wipe away. “It’s not like we’re in a  _ relationship _ .” 

Though he laughed afterwards, Leo spat out the word like he had the toothpaste, like the taste had gone foul in his mouth and the space there was cleaner without it. 

With the towel still to his face, a dozen cities flashes across the underside of Jack’s eyelids. None of it made any sense. When he brought the towel away, he looked up into the mirror, but he only saw his own reflection there. Leo had wandered into the kitchen. He was heating something up in the microwave. He was humming a jazz tune to himself. He was in the other room but impossibly far away. 

The five of them met up at an Italian restaurant for dinner before the show. To celebrate, Peter had rented out the whole place. He was too busy to show up himself, but he paid for everything. Though only Leo was twenty-one, there was a bottle of red wine waiting for them on the table. There was a note on it that read:  _ Only one glass each. I’ve got eyes and ears everywhere.  _

Angelina’s was a hole in the wall in Brooklyn. Half the letters in the sign outside were flickered or unlit entirely. The food was okay, but not great—the pizza was soggy but the sauce was just the right amount of sweet. Above all the wine was rich, and bread was served warm with a side of olive oil. They were happy and boisterous, unsupervised and nervous for a show that could transform the course of their collective career. Spencer hardly spoke the whole evening.

“Are you okay?” Jack mouthed, and he nodded slightly, but said nothing. Ronan noticed too, and patted Spencer on the back. Even Kyle slid a breadstick onto Spencer’s plate. A carbohydrate peace offering was all he could muster, but it was enough to make Spencer sit up a little straighter and smile the slightest bit at Leo’s exaggerated impressions of Peter. 

Leo sat next to Jack. He insisted they order two dishes and split them, making a big show of asking the waiter for extra plates. 

But then Ronan leaned across the table and picked up Jack’s fork. He waved it at the waiter. “You can take this,” he said. “The married couple shares silverware too.” 

Leo’s face hardened. He mumbled something about a draft and shifted his chair away from Jack’s. When the food came, he ate every last bite of his lasagna. The empty plates stared up at the ceiling, pale and spotless. 

When the wine was empty and all that remained of the bread were crumbs in the red checkered paper, the boys sat back in their chairs as the weight of the evening dawned on them. 

“There was no moon,” Ronan burst out with a delirious laugh. Instinctively, Kyle smacked him on the arm. “I’m just thinking!” he said, clutching the spot like he’d been shot. “Remember when we went to look at the moon that first night at Peter’s cabin, but there was nothing up there.” 

“You mean it was a new moon,” Jack corrected. 

“And we went out there to get plastered,” said Kyle. 

Ronan raised a glass. “I love you guys.” It was Spencer who answered back first, if wordlessly. He raised a glass of water with a straight arm. Jack felt something swell in his chest and followed suit. The toast ended in silence. Jack, so used to seeing them all bathed in spotlights, drank in the sight of their faces flickering against golden candlelight. The accordion music playing overhead was soft, punctuated by dishes clanging in the kitchen. Their eardrums would be shattered soon enough, their imperfections erased by white light and blaring bass. 

Jack drank deeply, relishing the last sip of his glass. The lyrics to “Her Eyes” did figure eights across his mind. Distracted and dreamy, he reached for Leo’s hand under the table. Leo flinched when their skin made contact. He spilled a water glass on the table and quickly dabbed at it with a cloth napkin. Ronan started applauding. The waiter came over to help clean up the mess while Spencer retreated back into himself. In the commotion, Kyle snuck a swig straight from the bottle. Leo apologized over and over until the last of the water had been mopped up. Jack sat back in his chair and watched it all unfold. He knew he should be helping, knew his mom would scold him for watching idly, but he couldn’t bring himself to move. 

_ What’s to know?  _ Jack mouthed the words to test how they would taste. Each syllable left him numb. When Leo sat back down his chair was a foot from Jack’s. In the van to the Garden, Leo sat next to Spencer, pestering him about the brand of his sneakers. Jack thought of the night before. 

Jack sang to Leo because he couldn’t stand the constant pull of the in-between. His limbs were tired of being ragdolled toward nothing and everything. That space in the middle was rejecting him. Choose, it insisted. Plant yourself in the garden or burn it down. Love him or erase him. 

On one side loomed the after—only using the microwave and listening to jazz through headphones in the apartment. On the other side was the glowing possibility of the before—leaving tulips on each other’s bedside tables, holding hands beneath award show tables, sneaking to cafés to sip hot chocolate in disguise—those months, that season, in which it had worked. They had worked. 

They went to see a movie downtown, something about superheroes with actors Jack could recognize but not name and the kind of plot that had gone stale a decade ago but had somehow held on across the years. They wore sunglasses and hoods, giggling to each other as they waited in line for popcorn, looking down whenever anyone glanced in their direction. It was the first time Jack enjoyed being famous. It gave him a reason to hide and an excuse to get drunk off the feeling of doing something so ordinary. When the movie started, Leo stopped trying to blend in. He whooped through every fight scene and clapped whenever someone died. When the credits rolled he called out, “Bravo!” 

Leo kept his 3D glasses on for the whole show, but Jack slipped his off so that the screen grew blurry but Leo’s face came into full focus. The oversized glasses made him look like a little kid and the screen lit up the edges of his soft features—the tip of his nose, the slant of his cheekbones, the subtle cleft in his chin. To step outside the movie was to observe Leo from a bird's eye view, to pick apart his favorite parts of that face with slow indulgence. All the while, Leo had looped his knee over Jack’s and rested his hand on Jack’s forearm. He was both the awed observer and intimate partner. The effect was euphoric. 

They slept in Leo’s bed that night, and though they kept all their clothes on, it was the closest Jack had ever felt to another person. Leo guided Jack’s head to his chest. 

When Jack protested he said, “You’re head’s not that big yet, Jackie. Your hands still shake before your big solos.” Jack laid his head down. Leo exhaled. “You shouldn’t get nervous, though. You’re the best of us. The best of anyone.” 

“No, that’s you,” said Jack, but Leo was already asleep, so the words just lingered there, Jack recalled now from the darkness of the back of the van. And somehow, without waking ears to land on, they must have undergone a metamorphosis. 

But Leo remembered what he’d said before. He lagged to wait for Jack on the way into the building, though security tried to hurry them along. 

“No shaky hands tonight, alright?” he said. He spoke loud enough for everyone to hear. Jack shoved his hands in his pockets and feigned a smile. “Like I said, you’re the best of us.” He punched Jack on the arm. It was a foreign pang—the shock of Leo’s knuckles where his soft palm usually fell.

“No,” Jack waited for Leo to jog back to the front of the group to mumble to the air. “That’s you.” 


	10. Winter 2013

Madison Square Garden was different. They’d played in larger stadiums. Hell, they’d performed live at the Grammys. But there were ghosts at the Garden—the good kind. Jack thought of David Bowie when he stepped onto the stage for their first rehearsal. During their final dress, he thought of Michael Jackson. When the lights went down for their last show at MSG—their last show of the tour—he considered his own ghosthood. He worried about that fate more than he longed for it. Ghosts, after all, were discontented souls. Jack’s only comfort was the thought that he wouldn’t haunt alone. So, when the lights went up, the final ghost he manifested was Leo’s. 

Madison Square Garden was different, but Jack wasn’t a creature of place—he was a creature of people. The faces of the screaming fans in the crowd were obscured by the lights, erasing their personhood into the realm of mass anonymity. Only the four boys who shared the stage with him could recognize Jack’s mortality, just as only he could recognize theirs. And Leo, only Leo, had traced the birthmarks on Jack’s back and brushed back the curls across his forehead to kiss the smooth, pale skin beneath. 

As always, their first song was a blur of white light and pounding adrenaline. Jack couldn’t get used to the electricity of it all, and he hoped he never would. Only Spencer had fully settled in after almost three years. He treated the job like a job—he stuck to his routine and kept his head down. With a voice like his though, he didn’t need the fire that Jack did. He could bring a crowd to their feet in his sleep. 

“This heartthrob thing is really getting out of hand,” said Ronan, leaning into Jack halfway through their second song. He pointed his mic at the ground as the boys always did when they didn’t want to be heard by the crowd. It was the reason that all five of them refused to wear head mics. They would lose their minds without exchanging dirty jokes and passing jokes under the audience’s noses. 

Jack looked out at the crowd. For the most part, it was a sea of glow sticks and waving hands, but the landscape was punctuated by neon posters with block-letter writing. Almost every sign addressed to Jack—

_ PAINT ME LIKE ONE OF YOUR FRENCH GIRLS, JACK.  _

_ WE’RE BOTH LEGAL, JACK, SO KISS ME.  _

_JACK,_ _HAMMER ME._

Jack cleared his throat and looked down at his shoes. He should’ve been glad to read the signs. They were evidence that the past was buried, that no one had any way of knowing, but they felt instead like punishments. 

His verse was coming up, so he said quickly, “They probably just don’t know how to spell Ronan.” 

One of their faster songs was playing—a party song. It had a thumping beat that gave Jack a headache, but made the audience pulsate with uncontained hysteria. Everytime the electric backing track began to throb, Jack reminded himself that he did it for the fans, that, yes, he loved music, but that songs like these were a necessary sacrifice. It was all part of the deal, as Peter liked to say. Sometimes, outrageous dance moves were the best way to cope. Like many habits, Jack had borrowed the tactic from Leo. 

Ronan shook his head as Jack moonwalked across the stage. 

It always surprised Jack, how quickly the shows went by. At the end of the first set, they had a chance to catch their collective breath. They hustled stools from backstage, stubborn in their conviction to do things themselves, and formed a semi-circle at centerstage. The fans knew what was coming. They took out their phone flashlights and lowered their roar to a hushed murmur. 

Though he liked the quiet, Jack had never liked the song before. It was full of clichés and major chords. Ronan, the only one who played guitar, always slowed down the tempo too much, so it dragged on for four minutes that should’ve been three. This time, though, the screaming dulled when Ronan began to play. It was still there, but it was more of a rainstorm than a hurricane. Jack found himself able to think. Tentatively, his consciousness emerged from its cave and looked around, feeling whispers of sunlight on its back. For the first time that evening, he allowed himself to really look at Leo. 

He needed a haircut. Jack had an urge to smooth down the tufts that stood up around Leo’s ears and at the crown of his head. Leo was always changing his hair. He would slick it back one day, part it on the side another, or ruffle it wild how he had that night. Jack liked it best when it was short and smooth like it had been when they’d met, but Leo never wore it like that anymore. His eyes had stayed the same—so blue it hurt and framed by the kind of lashes that made men insecure about themselves.  _ I look like the next Covergirl _ , he used to say, pulling at them in the bathroom mirror. Jack loved those eyelashes. His posture was better than usual, maybe because it was the Garden, but he was still so small. They sometimes made him stand on a box for photoshoots. Jack liked Leo better from up high. He was the oldest in the group, and it felt wrong to look down on him. On their stools, at least, they were all the same height. Leo sat with his heels together and his knees open. He watched Ronan play with a tiny smile on his face. When his solo approached, his expression hardened. His jaw tightened. His eyebrows lowered. 

They all faced out, as they had been instructed to do since their first concert.  _ The girls pay to see your faces _ . Jack was supposed to be the handsome one, the one all the girls liked the best. He was suddenly aware of a pimple in the center of his forehead. Someone had covered it up with beige slop, but he’d wiped it off with his thumb almost immediately, then wiped his thumb on his jeans. There was a streak mark on his thigh now, light against dark. 

It was a love song. Jack knew this. They’d put “Her Eyes” on the album in the hopes that it would outlive them. Couples would use it for their first dance. Prom kings and queens would sway to it. Every generic lyric was another dose of immortality. Jack wasn’t interested in immortality. He considered this in the lines leading up to his own solo. He didn’t want to live forever. He just wanted to live now. 

Jack sang a verse and a chorus to Leo. 

“ _ I loved him the moment he strode in my life. _ ”

He did not sing in Leo’s general direction, nor did he just glance toward Leo for poignant lines. There were no fans or instruments or ghosts. There was no one but Leo. Jack serenaded him without breaking eye contact, leaving the audience with nothing to look at but his profile, and pouring his every word into Leo and Leo and Leo. The crowd kept up its roar. 

The lyrics weren’t good enough. They didn’t say I miss you or I’m sorry or I should’ve tried harder, but I got scared. It was a happy song, but Jack tried to make it more with his voice, with the veins rising in his neck, with the tremble in his fingers on the mic stand. 

And when the final line of the song came around, with his gaze still squared on Leo from across the semi-circle, Jack brought his mouth closer to his microphone and sang, “ _ I erase from my mind any thought of goodbyes. There is no world outside of his eyes. _ ” 

The screaming ceased. 

“Sit down and shut up.” 

It was the louded Peter had ever spoken. Peter—who was known throughout the industry as the calm, cool, and collected—was hyperventilating so completely that the fabric of his t-shirt strained against the rise and fall of his shoulders. At any moment, Jack wagered, the cotton could give way. What then? Would he go full-on Hulk? Jack did as he was told. 

Peter had been pacing the length dressing room when the band arrived. He’d taken off his leather jacket and thrown it at the mirror framed in bare lightbulbs. Jack noticed, too, that his phone was cracked. He wondered whether Peter had dropped it or if his rage had spurred superhuman strength in his fists. The others must’ve noticed too. Ronan, Kyle, and Spencer turned around immediately and without their usual amusement at a scolding. Leo froze in the doorway. 

“We’ll talk later,” said Peter, though talking seemed unlikely given the strength and volume of his words. Leo looked at Jack, who gave an almost imperceptible nod. Before Peter could say anything more, Leo touched Jack’s arm, let his fingers linger there for a moment, and then disappeared into the hallway. 

“I said sit down.” Jack was still standing in front of the couch. He traced its seams with his gaze, not wanting to trace Peter’s pacing like a tennis match. As long as he didn’t look at Peter, he felt calm. It helped that his arm gently throbbed where Leo had touched him. Jack clung to the memory as he cradled his elbow with his hand. The couch’s leather was cold against his neck, so he sat forward, his shoulders hunched but unmoving. 

“Did I do something to hurt you?” Peter asked. His voice was quiet now. 

“No,” Jack said to the carpet. 

“Did I not do what I promised? Did I not make you the biggest  _ fucking  _ celebrity on the face of the planet?” 

Jack thought carefully about his response. He finally decided on: “Yes, you made me famous.” 

“Famous?” Peter kicked the edge of the coffee table and spun around. His hair was sticking up in every direction. He ran his fingers through it again now. “I made you a household name.” He stuck a finger in Jack’s face, like this was an accusation. 

Jack knew his next line so he delivered it. “Thank you,” he said, this time to the poor coffee table instead of to the floor. The carpet was cowskin. Jack wasn’t sure if it was real or not, but the sight of it was making his stomach lurch. At the end of the day, though, Peter had just assaulted the coffee table. They were all three of them victims of brutality

“You don’t have to thank me,” said Peter. His eyes were wide now, his voice a screaming whisper. “I never asked you to thank me. I just asked you to put an end to it.” 

“Put an end to what?”

Tess came into the dressing room then. She unplugged a hairdryer from the wall, kissed them both on the cheek, and strolled out the door. When she was gone, Peter spoke again, but his voice was at a normal volume, in a normal octave. 

“Every teenage girl in America wants you to be their boyfriend, Jack. I need you to be that for them.” 

Jack paused. He felt a wave of loneliness crash over him on that ice-cold leather couch. He wasn’t used to sitting on couches. He was used to cramming onto furniture with four other boys, fighting for cushion space and losing most of the time. Mostly, though, he was used to Leo’s arm around his shoulder, Leo’s hand resting on his knee, or Leo’s foot kicking at his own. Peter’s mouth twitched as the silence settled over them. It began to saturate the room to the point of bursting. When Peter inhaled, Jack filled the space first. 

“Okay,” he said. “It won’t happen again.” 

Peter’s face softened. “I know your job isn’t easy.” He put a hand on Jack’s knee. The gesture reminded Jack of a little league baseball dugout. It reminded Jack of his father. “You’re nineteen and the world’s eyes are on you. It’s exhausting. It’s taxing. I want to get you out on the other side unscathed. We’re on the same team here.” 

Jack nodded, his head submerged. My hair must be floating, he thought to himself. My lungs must be needing air soon. Only when Luna strode into the room did the water level lower. Peter took his hand off Jack’s knee and placed it instead on Luna’s back. He required someone else’s skin to steady himself. 

“You did great out there.” she said, her hand around Peter’s waist like they were waiting for Jack to take a photo for them. “I’ve never seen you connect with a song that way on stage before. It was really moving.” Peter pressed into her back, guiding Luna toward the door.

“I mean it,” she called over her shoulder, but Peter was already whispering something in her ear. 

Jack sat alone in the foaming aftermath. Somehow, Luna’s words stung more than Peter’s. She’d seen him, but still let herself be swept away. Part of him waited there on the couch expecting Luna to come back in and kneel on the carpet beside him, tuck his curls behind his ears the way his mother liked to. His mom had been at the show the night before. What would she have said? Could Peter have talked her, too, into leaving him there? Would she have paced, red-faced, as she waited for the show to end? Or would she have knelt at his side? Would she have pulled his head above water? 

In the end, it was Leo who sat down beside Jack on the cold leather couch. The cushion let out a noisy exhale when Leo plopped down, the same way he dropped himself onto the couch in their apartment or onto the seat beside Jack on the tour bus. He put his feet up on the coffee table and crossed them at the ankles. 

“I’m getting death threats from thirteen-year-old girls,” he said. “I’m honestly impressed by their creativity. None of that generic shooting or stabbing nonsense.” Leo pulled out his phone and read aloud, “ _ If you seduce Jack, I will grind your body into kibble and feed it to my German Shepherd _ .” He looked up. “It’s almost poetic.” 

Jack couldn’t laugh. He couldn’t laugh because if he did he would start to cry, and if he started to cry he wouldn’t be able to stop. And they were in a dressing room in Madison Square Garden surrounded by important people with earpieces and clipboards and camera phones, so he couldn’t cry. 

“I wish my mom was here,” Jack said because it was the only truth that felt safe in the labyrinth underground of the Garden. Jack wondered if, rather than that of the fire-spitting opening number or his second set high note, the ghost of his conversation with Peter would be what haunted the place for whomever came next. He wondered if they would feel his shame waterlogged into the couch cushions or catch whiffs of the sea salt tears he held back wafting through the air vents. 

“I want to go home,” he said quietly. Leo just nodded, but Jack only saw the motion out of the corner of his eye. He couldn’t bear to look at Leo. An hour ago, he’d had the courage to stare straight into Leo while flower-scented words poured out of him. That courage had been washed away and replaced with something new, something bitter with sharp edges. 

“Let’s go home then,” said Leo. He put his arm around Jack, and Jack let him. They got in the backseat of a black SUV together, as they had the night before and the night before. Jack always expected living in New York City to involve more taxis and fewer cars with mints in the cupholders. Then again, nothing about this life was what he had expected. 

Leo connected his phone to the car speakers and played smooth jazz, something that had gone from a joke to a habit to an almost passion. Jack watched traffic crawl by through the tinted windows until his vision started to blur. They were only a few blocks from their apartment, but the concert had catapulted downtown into slow-moving chaos. When he maneuvered to slide his phone out of his back pocket, Leo put his hand over Jack’s. 

“Don’t,” he said, and Jack’s stomach sank. He thought of Peter’s smashed phone screen and the way Tess had kissed him on the cheek. 

“Already?” he asked, his hand still in his pocket. He hadn’t checked his phone since before the show. 

Leo turned up the music. 

Jack didn’t check until the next morning. He’d forgotten to put the blinds down so light streamed into the room at seven in the morning. He was wearing one of Leo’s sweaters that he’d stolen weeks back. He peeled it off and flung it on the floor before unlocking his phone. Shirtless, his chest heaved up and down as he sat up in bed, the covers still pulled tightly around his waist. With every inhale he grew more aware of how the sheets smelled like the fabric softener Leo had picked out from the corner market, another touch of adulthood he’d added to their apartment like thyme. Jack threw off the covers and sat in only his sweatpants on the wrinkled mattress. His thumb lingered over a text from his mom, but he scrolled past it and opened Twitter. 

He didn’t have to look far. #HisEyes was number one on trending. Peter hadn’t been able to shut it down fast enough. The video was everywhere. Even though the moment had happened on stage at Madison Square Garden, the footage felt like an invasion of privacy, especially when the lenses zoomed in on Jack’s face so viewers could make out the mist his spit blasted through the air, the engravings on his rings, the tremble in his bottom lip on the low notes. Jack kept scrolling and scrolling until he came to a video in which he couldn’t see his own face, only Leo’s. Jack remembered Leo smiling during the song, but he couldn’t trust that memory, so swept up in light beams and butterfly release. 

He was right. While Ronan whispered something to Kyle and Spencer glanced offstage, Leo held steady, like he’d been expecting the serenade, like it happened every night. Something caught in Jack’s stomach when the camera zoomed in closer, so he could make out the color of Leo’s eyes even through the spotlight—so blue it hurt. 

“I made tacos.” Leo leaned against the doorway with his arms folded, glancing down at the sweater on Jack’s carpet. Jack jumped and hit his head on the bedpost. He let out a yelp. Leo just watched, his smile the same as in the video. 

Suddenly, the footage felt like eavesdropping. Even though Leo’s smile had belonged to Jack during that song, it still felt like stealing something to play it back again the next morning. “I was texting my mom,” Jack lied. 

“You were on Twitter.”

“I was on Twitter.” 

“You should text your mom, though.” Leo straightened one of Jack’s pillows. “She texted me,” he added. 

“My mom texted you?”

Leo shrugged. “She’s worried about you.” He sat down on the opposite side of the bed. Jack was achingly aware of the distance between them, but grateful for it nonetheless. Leo ran his finger along a seam in the mattress. “I am too.”

“I got caught up in the moment,” said Jack. It was the first time he’d acknowledged what had happened with Leo in the room. He felt calmer after spitting the words out. 

“Like with the pasta.”

Jack nodded. “Like with the pasta.” 

Leo stood and picked his sweater up from the bed. He swung it over his shoulder and turned toward the door. 

“It’s eight in the morning,” Jack called after him. “Why did you make tacos?”

“Because I don’t let society tell me how to live,” said Leo, repeating a phrase Jack had heard him utter dozens of times before—when he wore women’s sunglasses or drove through stop signs or put a hoodie on backward. This time, though, it was different. It had been months since Leo had cooked in the kitchen, months since he had played music aloud. 

Jack had broken something that demanded treatment, and other places were healing in the process. Still, there was a blank space on the carpet where there had been a sweater. He’d slept alone the night before, his body empty because his insides had been poured out on a haunted stage. Jack rubbed his eyes. 

There wasn’t enough air in the apartment anymore, or maybe there was too much. Either way, something was pulling at Jack’s guts so they seemed to stretch inside him like taffy. Padding softly across the carpet, Jack got dressed to go for a run. He avoided the spot on the floor where Leo’s sweater had puddled. He peeled off his sweatpants. He made the bed in his underwear, without smoothing the corner of the mattress where Leo had sat. After fishing a pair of gym shorts and a t-shirt out of his hamper, he shoved a hat over his hair, which was still stiff with hairspray from the night before. The smell of ground beef was already wafting into the room. It was followed by the sound of Mariachi music. Leo was singing along, despite his not knowing a word a Spanish. 

Sitting on the edge of his bed, letting the sounds and smells of Leo wash over him, Jack summoned the strength to read the texts from his mom. He had told Olivia about Leo— _ all  _ about Leo. In fact, she was the only person he had confided in. Olivia was incapable of shock. She nodded over FaceTime like he had been telling her about half-off cereal at the corner store. That quiet acknowledgement was exactly what he had wanted. She hadn’t even texted him about the video. She was never one to reach out first, and that made Jack feel in control. His mother was more difficult to wrap his mind around, to write words or form expressions for, and not just because of the soft places under her oversized cardigans. 

He unlocked his phone. 

_ I love you, JJ _ . 

_ I’m proud of you no matter what.  _

Jack didn’t respond. If he responded, he would have to admit something, whether directly or not. He promised himself to call her later. Whatever he told her would feel less like a declaration that way. When he switched off his phone, she was banished from the apartment. It felt like breaking a rule. Jack put on his sneakers, but didn’t tie the laces, something that made his mother’s eyes bulge, but his mother wasn’t in his apartment. He tripped on the way to the kitchen. 

Leo had laid out ten tortillas on the counter in two neat rows of five. He had an apron on over his pajamas, the kind that made it look like he was a cartoon hot lady in a bikini. 

“Dos, por favor,” said Jack. Leo assembled three tacos on a plate and slid them across the counter. Jack ate them standing up because it felt like the most normal thing to do. Leo’s cooking had spurred the air, which had been crowding in the rafters for months, back into proper circulation again. Leo said the meat was over-seasoned. Jack said it was perfect, but could he have some sour cream. Leo asked why anyone would ruin a perfectly good breakfast taco with sour cream. Jack asked what qualified as a breakfast taco, to which Leo replied, “Any taco served before noon.” 

This is how friends talk, Jack thought to himself. Leo’s words from the morning before rang against his skull—  _ It’s not like we’re in a relationship _ . 

The doorbell rang. Jack looked toward Leo. 

“I can’t answer the door dressed like this.” He looked down at his apron. “I’m half naked.”

Jack threw a tortilla which hit Leo square on the forehead with a smack. He trotted to the door, being careful not to trip on his untied shoelaces. He took one of the tacos with him and was taking a bite when he came face to face with Luna. 

“I’m sorry,” she said before he could process the fact that his doorway was a portal now, that his two universes were colliding without his consent. 

“What are you sorry for?” 

“Is that Luna?” Leo walked over while he pulled the apron over his head. 

“Hey, Leo,” she called over Jack’s shoulder. “Good. I’m glad you’re both awake.”

Leo slung an arm around Jack, who flinched at the touch. “Are you here to congratulate us on our engagement? Did Peter send you with champagne?”

Luna laughed. No—she giggled, the refined control of her speech falling away as her discomfort bubbled up. Jack wanted to close the door, but Leo’s arm on his shoulder was paralyzing. Instead he let the smile drip off his face. His face underwent a metamorphosis so slow and deliberate that he knew Luna would have no choice but to notice. 

“I’m sorry,” she repeated. “Peter sent me. He wants to talk to you two.” 

Leo raised an eyebrow and placed a hand on his hip, the other stayed planted on Jack’s shoulder. “You’re escorting us to the principal's office?” 

Luna pulled a white box out of her purse. It was wrapped in purple ribbon. “I brought croissants,” she said. 

Finally, Leo unwound himself from Jack to point back toward the kitchen. “I made tacos!” he shouted, his hand stiff as a spatula. Luna looked to Jack, who shrugged. 

“They’re breakfast tacos,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” Luna added for the third time. “But you two need to come with me.” 

It dawned on Jack slowly. As they rode up forty floors in a glass elevator, and he watched the Statue of Liberty grow more and more insignificant, and his ears popped from the tightening pressure, he realized why Peter hadn’t just sat them down together on that cold leather coach in the dressing room. The theory solidified when Luna led them into his office, and Peter turned around in his oversized swivel chair at his oversized desk, as though they had interrupted something important, as though he hadn’t been refreshing his Twitter feed and checking his teeth for spinach salad in the reflection of his cracked iPhone. 

Jack was only wrong about one thing, he decided. Peter’s phone had already been replaced. He set the newest iPhone model down on his desk like a trump card. 

“I’ve heard there’s a shit load of storage on those,” said Leo as he settled into a seat beside Jack. Both chairs were absurdly narrow and short. Jack had to fold himself between the armrest and even then had to crane his neck to make out the color of Peter’s tie over the desk. 

“You’re not in trouble,” Peter said. Luna loomed behind him. She picked up a picture frame and wiped the dust from its glass with her sleeve. When she set it back down, Jack saw that it was a photo of the two of them on their wedding day. Luna looked the same, though her hair had been in dreadlocks then. Peter looked worlds younger, his face free of wrinkles and his shoulders broader. 

“It kind of feels like we’re in trouble,” said Leo. Jack kept staring at the picture. He wondered if people would look at photos of him onstage years later and judge it against whatever he grew up to be—whether he got fat or his hair lost its volume or his eyes their spark. 

“I just want you to meet someone,” said Peter. Luna turned back toward the shelf with all the picture frames. She bit her thumb. Jack had never seen her do that before. Luna’s nails were always painted a gem tone—red or purple or emerald green. When she pulled her thumb away, Jack saw that her teal polish was chipped in the place her teeth must have dug in. 

Peter pressed a button on his office phone. “Send Anastasia in.” 

She was tall and Jack liked her skirt. He studied the skirt because he couldn’t bear to fixate on how tall she was—taller than Leo but shorter than Jack. Her skirt was high-waisted and it flared out all the way to her shins. It looked old school, but vintage, not thrifted. She blushed when Leo gave her a salute. Jack had yet to look up from the skirt. There was a thread loose along the hem. Jack started to reach for it, but Leo pulled his hand away. It happened quickly enough that no one had noticed, but Jack’s hand throbbed again, the way his skin always did when Leo touched it in passing. 

No one spoke, so Luna stepped forward. She was holding another picture frame now, her nails ticking nervously against the glass. Jack couldn’t make out the photo. “This is Anastasia,” said Luna. 

“I go by Anna,” she said. Her voice was deeper than Jack had expected, and he appreciated that she recognized the ridiculous snobbery of her own name. 

Peter finally spoke up. He shot out of his chair like someone had sent an electric shock through the leather. “That’s great!” 

“My real name is John,” said Jack. “But I go by Jack. A lot of people don’t know that.”

“And my favorite ice cream flavor is mint chip,” said Leo. Anna giggled. 

“Alright, alright. Have a seat.” Peter cleared some papers off of an armchair beside the window. Anna sat a few feet from everyone else. With her long legs crossed and her hair snaking down the front of her chest in shining blonde waves, she was like a marble statue in full color. The light hit her just right. The rest of them couldn’t help but look at her. “

Anna is a model,” said Peter. He gestured at her like a tour guide. Here was an attraction, not a human. 

Luna took a step toward the boys. “This is only temporary.” 

“What’s only temporary?” Leo asked. 

Peter sighed. “You’re just going to go on a few dates.” 

“A few whats?” Leo’s eyes darted between Anna and Peter and back again. 

“Go out to dinner, let them take a few pictures. If you like each other, great. If not, that’s fine.” Peter was talking to Leo. He wasn’t talking to Jack, he was talking to Leo. 

“But she’s so tall,” Jack said quietly. All heads swiveled toward him at once. 

Leo leaned toward Jack. It was pointless. Everyone else could hear, but Jack appreciated the gesture. “You're the heartthrob,” he said. “Heartthrobs don’t get girlfriends. It ruins the illusion.” 

“What illusion?”

“The illusion that you belong to every girl simultaneously.” Leo threw his head back and spat at the ceiling. “That you’re both transcendent and attainable, that you’re a fucking sex god.” 

Jack stood up. He couldn’t be in that room anymore. He couldn’t be in the glass elevator either, so he wound his way down forty flights of stairs. Eventually, his shoelaces came untied, but he left them that way until he tripped three floors from the bottom. He ripped his jeans on the edge of a concrete step, and something about the way the blood seeped through satisfied him. No one had followed him, so he had the luxury of sitting there on the step and watching the stain grow bigger and bigger. Though it stung, he dug his finger into the cut on his knee and let the hot liquid pool on his fingertip, so he could smear it on the dirty ground. Someday, maybe when some intern was trying to lose weight or the next time the elevator broke, someone would find the paintbrush streak of his blood there, and no one would have any way of tracing it back to him. It was an anonymous poem, an unsigned work of art, and it felt good.

Leo caught up to him first, his chest heaving. He rested a hand on Jack’s back. 

“Are you okay?”

“No,” Jack replied. Whether Leo was referring to Anna or the blood, the answer was the same. 

He knelt down beside Jack. “You know this doesn’t change anything, right?”

Jack nodded and let Leo kiss him softly on the neck, but the truth was he didn’t know that nothing would change. He didn’t know what he was to Leo. They never talked about it, but Jack’s knee was throbbing too incessantly for him to form any words now. 

“Just a few dates,” Leo said, lifting Jack’s chin. “Just a couple pictures.” 

When footsteps echoed from the flights above, Leo pulled away, and the place on Jack’s skin where his lips had lingered throbbed just the same as the open wound on his knee—red, bloodied, and raw. 


	11. Spring 2014

Anna liked to bake. At first, Jack was grateful for cinnamon rolls in the morning and red velvet cupcakes after dinner, but there were costs. No matter how much he sprayed it down, the counter was always sprinkled with flour. Whenever he went to make himself an omelette, they were out of eggs. Sorry, Leo would say with a shrug, Anna made merengue last night. And, sure, the merengue had been delicious, but so too were omelettes. It wasn’t just the inconvenience of the traces Anna left behind, it was that she was never really gone. There was always evidence, somewhere of her influence in their lives. Her lurking presence made Jack uneasy. He swore he could smell her around corners, catch glimpses of her in the microwave reflection late at night. 

They called it an “arranged marriage” as a joke, but, like with actual arranged marriages, Anna and Leo learned to love each other. Sure, Leo assured Jack again and again that it was all an act, that they were just good friends, but the assurances were becoming more and more rare. Slowly, Leo was gone more often, and when he was home, he brought Anna. Soon, the smell of something baking filled Jack with nausea. The sound of the oven timer going off made his muscles jerk. Leo had never promised anything to Jack. After the concert footage went viral and Peter introduced them to Anna in his penthouse office, things changed. Leo and Jack went back to the way it had been before Amsterdam. Anna became more of a lover to Leo than Jack had ever been. It took a year for the real to become imagined and the imagined to become real. 

He was doing laundry when he found the strip of poster wadded up in the pocket of an old pair of jeans. Anna was in the kitchen. She’d told Jack she’d been bombarded by paparazzi outside her spin class that morning. He had just nodded and gone to check on the dryer. There were ten more minutes in the cycle so he just watched his clothes spin around and around until the machine let out a chime, a much more soothing sound than the one the oven made. 

A cloud of warmth hit him when he opened the dryer. He dug his arms in up to the elbows and knelt there for a moment, feeling trapped but safe. He rarely went out anymore on his days off. The photographers had gotten worse after their latest album hit number one. So, it was nice to be trapped up to the elbows, trapped but safe. 

Jack could hear a wooden spoon knocking against the side of a bowl in the kitchen. He didn’t think about the spring. They had been the best months of his life, and yet they made his whole body ache to imagine. He couldn’t stop his fingers from unraveling the paper which the months had hardened to a crisp, waterlogged with ink running, but he could still make out a trail of cigarette smoke snaking up into nothing. 

The knocking had stopped in the kitchen, replaced by the front door swinging open and shut, a pair of keys hitting the counter instead of the rack, a deep voice followed by a windchime giggle. 

Jack rested a laundry basket on his hip. Leo was standing across the room from Anna, but they were both smiling. Leo had flour streaked across his cheek. 

Neither of them turned to look at Jack, so he called out “Can I speak to you alone?” Anna pointed to her own chest. Jack shook his head. “Leo,” he said. Leo laughed and patted Jack on the shoulder as he glided past. He walked into Jack’s bedroom where clothes were strewn across the floor in sad clumps. The ceiling fan was broken, so it never stopped turning slowly, too slow to blur its spokes into a seamless circle. One of Leo’s books was open on the desk. Jack looked to it and back to Leo, but he was only studying a poster on the wall. 

“I didn’t know you listened to Nirvana,” he said. 

Deflated, Jack sat on the unmade bed. The mattress let out a whine. 

“I don’t,” he said, not feeling like explaining. Leo knew the poster was a joke. He knew Jack listened to sad pop songs from the 2000s and country folk singers his mom recommended. He knew Jack had borrowed his overdue library book and opened on his desk to the page of the frog dissection so he would notice. He knew that somewhere they both still had a strip of a re-printed Van Gogh painting, an accident that had become a memory that had become something that was almost but not quite regret. 

“Anna’s making shortbread,” he said, jutting his thumb toward the door. Jack got up from the bed and closed it. 

“Are you dating Anna?” 

“What do you mean? Of course I’m dating Anna,” said Leo. “She’s my girlfriend.” 

Jack shook his head. “You know what I mean. At the start of all this, it wasn’t supposed to be—”

“What?”

“ _ Real _ .” Jack curled his fingers like he was trying to latch onto the air itself. “It was supposed to be an act. It was supposed to be temporary and now she practically lives here.” 

Leo sighed. “It’s easier like this. We have to spend all this time together. We might as well learn to like each other.” 

“What does that mean?” 

“Anna and I—” Leo paused. 

“Say it,” Jack shouted, though he hadn’t meant to. He tried to unlock his jaw, but it wouldn’t move. 

“I guess we are dating, okay? And I’m happy. Isn’t that what you want for me? Don’t you want me to be happy?” 

The timer beeped across the apartment. Jack jumped. Instinctively, Leo reached for his arm. His hand lingered there until Jack relaxed again and settled his leg back down onto the mattress. Leo straightened himself and leaned against the closed door. Jack noticed the stubble creeping in across his chin and upper lip. He’d noticed it before over the years, but now it looked thicker, and it fit the rest of Leo’s face. Unlike Jack’s own stubble, the hint of facial hair made Leo look refined. It accentuated the cut of his jaw, the gentle swoop of his upper lip. 

Studying this, Jack nearly gave in. He considered shaking his head and laughing and going into the kitchen to have some shortbread straight out of the oven. But then he noticed that Leo was wearing the blue sweater. That was why his eyes were screaming out of their sockets. That was why his every move felt to Jack like a reflection—both of himself and of a bigger memory he couldn’t put his finger on. The sweater was Jack’s. It was pale blue. It was Amsterdam and the three months that followed. 

“Take it off,” said Jack. 

“What?” 

He stood up and reached for the sweater’s narrow woven collar. Leo flinched backward, but Jack didn’t stop his advance. 

“Take it off,” he repeated. “The sweater.” Now he had a hand on the hem, too, which was frayed. Threads came off in Jack’s hand as he pawed at it. 

“What the hell are you doing?” Leo sidestepped Jack. He held up his hand to stop him from coming any closer. Jack exhaled. His shoulders sagged. His chest rose and fell and rose and fell until his skin could contain his breath again, until the color in his cheeks faded from red to pink to pale. 

Leo’s voice softened. “Are you okay?” 

Jack didn’t say anything as he pulled the paper strip from his back pocket. It crunched as he unrolled it. Stray pieces of black and white confettied to the floor. He handed the streamer to Leo, who recognized it immediately. He held it in his hands like fine jewelry he was trying not to smudge with his fingerprints. 

“They gave us the wrong fucking poster,” he said, almost a whisper. 

“A bad omen.”

“A  _ good  _ omen,” Leo corrected. 

Jack thought of how fans saved the confetti from their concerts, peeling dirty squares of tissue paper of the gum-covered floor to stuff in the pockets of their ripped shorts. They were desperate scavengers, hopeless hoarders of memory. He stood up on the stage, yes, but he was just the same way. 

“I miss Amsterdam, too,” said Leo. “I can’t believe it’s been almost a year.” 

“I didn’t say I missed it.” 

“Do you?”

“Not the city,” said Jack. His finger shook as he reached out to touch the front of Leo’s sweater. It was softer than he remembered. He let the feeling calm him as he added, “but what started there.” 

Leo smirked. “The tulip trade?” 

“Fuck you.” 

This time it was Leo who stepped closer, and there was the in-between place, vibrating again. This time it was glowing, so warm and bright that Leo had to see it too. Jack let his finger give way to a palm resting there on Leo’s chest. He felt his breath, slower than he’d expected. Steady. 

“Anna,” said Leo, so quietly that Jack could have chosen not to hear. 

“I know.” Slowly, he backed away. Leo handed back the strip of paper. 

“I’ll give you the sweater, too, if you want.” 

“Only if it’s a promise.” 

Without hesitation, Leo peeled it off his back and handed it to Jack. He stood there in just a cotton t-shirt. Anna called something from the kitchen. 

“I don’t want you to hurt her,” said Jack. 

“I won’t.”

“Okay.” Jack cleared his throat and started folding his laundry. He was too aware of Anna’s voice humming in the kitchen to do anything else. Leo smiled and raised an eyebrow. “The fucking tulip trade,” said Jack when they locked eyes again. “I can’t believe you.” 

Anna was in the mezzanine. Jack didn’t spot her on his own. All he’d had to do was follow Leo’s eyes to the spot they kept darting toward, and there she was, her blonde hair draped over a sequin dress, her pale frame the only still one in a sea of rocking bodies. She seemed unfazed by the screaming. Jack wondered if she’d been to other shows recently and he just noticed, or whether Leo had prepped her.  _ It’s going to sound like the inside of a jet engine, darling. It’s going to feel like your organs are trying to squeeze out through your eardrums, but pay it no mind. You’ll only be half-deaf for a few days afterward. And if you’re us, you’ll just be half-deaf for the rest of your life. You get used to the not hearing. It’s a luxury, really.  _

Someone threw a bra on stage, and it hit Leo in the face. He caught it and smirked up at the mezzanine. Jack missed his solo. Ronan played a riff on the guitar to cover while the fans screamed the words they all knew by heart. 

“She’s been at the last three shows,” Kyle whispered when he passed Jack, his microphone pointed to the ground. He rolled his eyes, but Jack could only stare. 

This time, Jack noticed when Leo disappeared after the lights went down on their final encore. It was only for twenty minutes, but he was out of breath when he returned to the dressing room. The rest of the boys had peeled off their graphic tees and skinny jeans, exchanging them for sweats and winter hats. Leo’s earpiece still hung from his neck. His hair still stood up in all directions, mussed up in exactly the fashion Tess intended. 

“Where were you?” Jack spat out the moment he saw Leo’s reflection flash across the mirror. 

“Yeah, Leo,” Ronan called with eyebrows raised. “Where were you?” 

“Hey, did you keep that bra?” Kyle asked. “Or did you find another one just now?” 

At first, Leo grinned, but his face quickly softened when he saw Jack pull his hat down over his forehead. It was hours before they could talk alone, but Jack wasn’t interested at all. He borrowed Spencer’s oversized headphones and slumped against the window of their tour bus while the rest of the boys slept. Leo read in his bunk until he heard three distinct snores cutting through the engine’s hum. The adults on the bus—Peter, Luna, Tess, and the instrumentalists—were sectioned off in the front. At last piecing together some semblance of privacy, Leo slipped into the seat beside Jack. 

“I was gonna tell you.” 

“When?” said Jack. He tried to force anger into his voice, but he couldn’t muster it. Instead, the word came out quivering.

“After the tour,” said Leo. “I knew it would upset you, and I just wanted to get through the tour.” 

Jack rolled his eyes, though it made him feel like a child. “You really thought I wouldn’t notice your six-foot platinum blonde marble statue of a girlfriend?” 

“That was the hope, yes.” Jack turned back toward the window, tightening his hood around his chin. He knew he looked ridiculous with his curls haloing out beneath the fabric, but he didn’t care. It suddenly felt like an assault that Leo had memorized all his features. He wanted to reset them all. He wanted back the promise of giving them to someone else untouched. “It’s just for publicity stuff,” Leo went on. “Peter made her come so paparazzi would see her at the shows. Afterwards we take a few pictures to post on Instagram. You know I don’t hang out with her or anything. I’m with you all the time, Jack.” 

“What is this?” Jack asked the question that had been brewing in him for weeks. “What have we been doing all this time? Is it just fun for you? Is it just stress relief?” 

“No,” was all Leo could muster. 

“Then what is it?” Jack pulled off his hood and his hair sprang to life. He wanted to feel like Medusa unleashed. He wanted to look how he felt—enraged, but there was so much sadness and affection mixed in that his anger was drowning in the mist. 

“You’re my best friend,” said Leo. 

Jack stood up. He was sitting in the window seat and he hit his head on the ceiling. The slam turned on the overhead light and set off a dull throbbing on the inside of his skull. 

“Goddamn—” he started to say, but Leo cut him off. It had been weeks since they’d kissed, and Jack melted to remember the hot softness of Leo’s lips all over again. It wasn’t fair. Jack couldn’t think. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t feel anything but  _ need _ . “Not here,” he managed to mumble, but Leo had already pulled Jack’s shirt over his head and was working on his own. Somehow Leo’s skin was glowing warm, but he didn’t tense against Jack’s cold goosebumps. Soon, both in temperature and position, they met in the middle. Leo tried to pull Jack on top of him, but Jack was stronger. He pulled Leo onto his lap. When Jack kissed his neck, Leo let out a half-moan, half-laugh, and that sound unlatched a haven in Jack that had been boarded up since summertime. His hand was in Leo’s hair. Leo’s hand was on Jack’s chest, and there was no Anna. There was no Peter. There was no band. There was just the two of them unlocked in the in-between. 

And then there was Kyle. 

“Oh,” he said. At first, Jack thought it was Leo, but then he realized that his mouth was on Leo’s mouth. Jack froze, willed reality to collapse if only for an instant. Leo finally pulled away. “You were just–” Kyle muttered. He pointed a finger at the two of them, returned it to his side, opened his mouth, closed it. He was in his underwear and clutching a pillow. He looked tired, but not tired enough. “You were making a lot of noise, so I thought—” 

“Jack was just messing with me,” said Leo. Then he added, “We were just talking and—” He stood up into the aisle. Jack lost his balance and fell onto his elbows. 

“Making out?” Kyle laughed the words out, but when neither one said anything, his face turned grave. With fingers drumming on a headrest and eyes wild, Leo took up a new tactic. 

“Look, don’t tell anyone, okay?” He spoke in a fierce whisper. 

“Is this- Do you guys?” Kyle rubbed his eyes. 

“No,” said Leo. Jack couldn’t speak. He couldn’t move. “We aren’t  _ together _ or anything like that. I’m with Anna. You know that. Jack knows that.” Leo’s head darted back and forth. “We were just messing around. Hey, look, it’s late. We should all go to bed.” 

_ Together _ . Another word Leo danced over, like it was too sharp to linger on, too absurd to articulate all the way. Both Kyle and Leo looked to Jack, waiting for him to say something, to deny what Kyle had seen and make it all so much simpler, banish its beauty to the ugly and forgotten. But Jack refused. 

“Fuck you, Leo,” he said, accentuating every last consonant. He pushed past them both and climbed into his bunk. Below, Ronan was grumbling something about his sleep cycle. Kyle whisked back the curtain blocking out the light. At the sound, Spencer sat up across the aisle. Jack made out his shadow on the wall, slumped but somehow upright, undeniably conscious. It was the quietest the five of them had been on the tour bus when they weren’t recording or sleeping since it had all started. Jack didn’t turn around, but he could picture Leo’s face—sheet white, eyes wide, his head shaking furiously at Kyle. But it was too late. They were a band, and the secret now held a majority. Kyle spoke, and the secret flooded them entirely. Spencer went back to sleep, but Ronan went to the front of the bus and stayed the night there. Kyle played video games with the volume turned all the way up. Leo went to the bathroom and slammed the door. 

Jack stayed where he was. It was always hot on the bus, but he pulled his hat back down over his forehead and let his hands retreat inside his sweatshirt. Grateful for the nighttime and the interstate, he watched headlights slide their way across his sheets, watched his knees bob up and down with the rolling of the bus. Eventually, he fell asleep. When he woke, he forgot what had happened until he saw all the empty bunks. Then the grief poured over him and the paralysis gave way to a need to run, jump, move, flee. 

With shaking hands, he laced up his sneakers. The bus rolled to a stop in front of some arena in some city in some state. Jack pushed his way to the front of the bus, while adults with morning breath reached for his shoulders and asked him what was the matter. He didn’t stop. The driver must’ve sensed his determination, or else Jack willed the doors open. He stepped out onto the pavement and ran. 

As it turned out, they were in Philadelphia. Jack didn’t see the actual Liberty Bell, but he saw it on a billboard in all its cracked glory. He hadn’t put socks on, so his feet started to sweat and blister after an hour of walking along the side of the road. No one came after him, which was both a disappointment and a relief. He sat down on the curb and took out his phone. 

“I’m in Philadelphia.” 

“I know, honey. I have your tour schedule taped to the fridge.” His mom sounded tired. He must’ve woken her up. 

Jack craned his neck to look up at the sky. With the city lights on the horizon, he couldn’t make out any stars, but the moon was almost full. “Don’t we have a magnetic fridge?”

“We do,” Rebecca laughed. “I just don’t don’t want to rearrange the magnets” 

“Hm.” 

“Jack, honey.”

“Yeah?”

“You know I love to hear from you but it’s-” she paused. “Three in the morning. Why are you calling?” 

Jack started to cry. 

“You’re in Philadelphia?” she asked. He nodded, before realizing even his mother couldn’t hear a nod through the phone. 

“Yeah,” he said. He wiped his nose on his sleeve. 

Jack heard a lightswitch snap on. “I’m coming.” 

It should’ve taken three hours, but she was there in two. Per his mom’s instructions, Jack waited in a twenty-four hour diner she’d found on Yelp. He ordered a cup of coffee and a waffle, eating them both as slowly as possible. When his mom arrived, he ordered French toast and a strawberry milkshake. She smiled at the waitress and asked for the same but with chocolate. She waited until they were finished eating to set her elbows on the table and lean forward—listening position. 

“I think I’m in love, Mom.” 

She took his hand. Hers was warm, as it somehow always was. 

“That’s great, Jack.”

“It hurts,” he said and started to cry again. The sun was just coming up, but the place was somewhat full. Two truckers sat in a booth drinking cup after cup of steaming coffee. An old man flipped through a local newspaper. A group of teenage girls with smudged mascara crowded around a table by the window. None of them batted an eye at Jack or his tears. 

“I know,” said Rebecca. Jack was grateful that she didn’t get up. Instead, she rubbed circles on the back of his hand with her thumb. “Olivia shows me things,” she said. 

Jack laughed because he wanted to sob but knew that threatened to cause heads to turn. 

“What things?” he asked. 

“Things on Twitter and Instagram, the things people write about you and Leo.” 

Jack shook his head and pushed his plate away. “I don’t look at that stuff.” 

The waitress came to pick up the check. The three of them small-talked for a few minutes. Rebecca asked about the Flyers lineup. The waitress said something about Jack looking familiar, but quickly dropped it. When she left, Jack pulled up his hood and left the straw wrapper he’d been folding and unfolding on the table. His mom reached out to hold his forearm. 

“Wait,” she said. “I want you to know that I love you no matter what. I don’t care who you love. I don’t care what people on the Internet say. I don’t care what anyone says. You’re my son, and I love you. Olivia loves you. Leo—”

“Mom, stop,” he sat back down, but he pulled his arm away, shoving it back in the pocket of his sweatshirt. 

“You can tell me anything,” she said softly. 

“I know.” She waited. It was a practice she’d perfected over the years—waiting for her parents to pick her up from school long after it got dark, Jack’s father to come back from work trips long after he promised to return, waiting for Jack’s stubborn fame to die down just enough that she could watch her son grow up again, at least from the sidelines and not from miles and oceans away. This time, though, her waiting gave way to something. 

“I love him.” 

He couldn’t say the name, which had gone from his favorite word to the most painful to utter. In that year and in that world, “ _him_ ” was enough to make his mother’s eyes fill with tears, enough to make Jack shudder. Somehow, it has been easier to sing “ _his eyes_.” Saying it meant it wasn’t an act. Saying meant not only feeling it, but living with it. 

“I’m so proud of you.” His mom reached for his forearm again, and Jack let her take it. “This is a happy thing, Jack.” 

Loving instinct took over, and he mumbled, “Thanks, Mom.” 

Rebecca leaned forward. “Are you—?” When Jack didn’t respond, she went on. “Are you gay?” Throughout all the mess, all the meetings, all the rumors, it was the first time someone had said the word aloud to Jack. It felt like a weight lifted, like a secret he had known all along but someone had finally had the guts to tell him. He answered with a secret of his own. 

“I don’t know,” he said. 

His mom smiled and squeezed. “That’s okay.” 

It was half okay. The not knowing was bearable, even irrelevant, but the loving, the hurting—that wasn’t. 

“He was so ashamed, Mom. He couldn’t touch me. He couldn’t even look at me.”

“He wasn’t ashamed of you, honey. He was ashamed for himself. He shouldn’t have felt that way, but it was about him.” She nodded firmly. “It wasn’t about you.” 

“What do I do with all this-,” Jack lifted both hands, as though to claw at his insides. He didn’t want to say the word but it was the only one that fit. “This  _ love _ ,” he said with his neck lowered. 

“You hold on to it. It’s precious and the time will come when you’ll get to use it.” Finally, she slid out of the booth and slipped in on his side, holding him close to her chest, though heads finally turned toward them. Jack didn’t care. “And Leo, or whoever the hell that person ends up being, will be lucky as hell. Do you hear me?” Jack laughed again, but this time it wasn’t to cover anything else up. “Lucky. As. Hell.” She kissed the side of his head between each word. 

They left the diner arm and arm. The bell on the door jingled, and from then on Jack associated that sound with the most golden of dawns. It broke through between the buildings, turning barbed-wire fences and rundown gas stations to the most majestic of palaces. 

“What do I do now?” he asked as they walked in unison to the car. 

Rebecca tapped Jack in the center of his chest. 

“You get on that stage tonight, honey, and you show the world all the love you’ve got stored up in there just waiting to pour out.” 


	12. Fall 2014

Jack moved out a month after Kyle caught him with Leo on the tour bus. By then, it was more of a formality. He was already a ghost in the apartment, sleeping on friends’ couches whenever he could, keeping his bedroom door shut and locked whenever he was home. If Jack had to come to the kitchen for something, Anna was somehow always there to block him from Leo’s line of vision. She offered Jack cookies and muffins, which he always refused. She folded his laundry when he left it in the dryer, but he undid her work by shoving shirt and pants into his drawers until they bore wrinkles. 

Leo wasn’t home the day Jack moved his final box of stuff to his sleek new apartment across town. He left the blue sweater on Leo’s bed. The offering added a sense of permanency to his leaving, but Jack knew they would see each other at the recording studio that afternoon. 

With the box balanced on his hip, Jack made a final loop around the kitchen to be sure he hadn’t left anything. He lingered over the stove, telling himself he was checking the burners were turned off, but feeling boiling water, overcooked pasta, and Leo’s lips all the same. 

He lasted another month living alone before he called his sister. On tour, the thought of returning home always kept him going, pushing through the jet lag and the screaming and the unavoidable sight of someone he had once loved—someone he still loved—loving someone else. By the band’s fourth tour, picturing his penthouse in New York with its sleek leather furniture and modern light fixtures made him sick to his stomach. He needed a better place to imagine, if not to occupy. 

Olivia picked up after the first beep. 

“I’m moving to Boston,” he said before she had a chance to say anything. 

Olivia was in grad school. She was getting cooler and smarter and more beautiful by the day, and Jack loved watching it happen but hated that the watching was all from afar. 

“No, you’re not.” 

“Yes, I am. I’m packing up my stuff as we speak.”

Olivia shuffled some papers on the other end of the line. “You’re in Tokyo right now,” she said. Jack heard her type something. “And it’s two in the morning there.” 

She was right. Jack stared up at the popcorn ceiling in his otherwise very fancy Japanese hotel. The toilet came with a remote. He was lying on a waterbed. He hated how it sloshed him back and forth when he made even the slightest movement, but standing up felt like a worse alternative. 

He rolled over onto his stomach. “Okay, fine. I’m moving to Boston when this tour is over.” 

“Alright, I’ll fluff the couch cushions.”

He laughed. “We’ll get a new place, a big place with big windows overlooking the Charles. I’ll buy us each a king size bed.” 

“Jack-”

“And lots of modern art. How do you feel about modern art?” 

“Jack, how are you doing?” There was a hint of sharpness in her tone. Jack was grateful for it. She didn’t ask the question delicately. She never asked anything delicately. Olivia was a candid person. She didn’t take any bullshit. It was why he’d called her instead of their mom. 

“I love the band. I love the music and the boys and the fans and seeing the world like this.” he said. Olivia sighed. Waited. “But I’m so sad, Liv.”

“Why are you sad?” she asked, though she knew the answer. Delicacy had crept into her voice, and though it was exactly the treatment he had called his sister to avoid, he didn’t mind. She already knew why he was calling. He hadn’t come out to her directly, but he’d driven to her apartment in Boston a year earlier, crying and carrying a large pizza with sausage, onion, and bell pepper. 

“Girl trouble?” she had asked, her eyes not leaving the Word document that blinked on her laptop. 

To which Jack had replied, deadpan, “Boy trouble.”

She looked up then, but her face was still stone, the beautiful stone he’d grown up with, steady and striking. 

“Well, the pizza works all the same,” she said. 

Now, on the phone a year later and an ocean away, he considered lying, but it was useless with Olivia. Besides that, he hadn’t called to get her to sign a lease on a new apartment in Boston. He had called to tell her the truth, to speak it aloud so it would stop ricocheting up against his ribcage all night. 

“Leo,” he finally said. His eyes darted to the bolted door. Ever since Kyle had caught them together on the tour bus, Jack was constantly paranoid that even his thoughts echoed too loudly. Saying Leo’s name in that way, on the phone to his older sister at two in the morning, felt like a sin. 

“I’m sorry, Jack,” Olivia said with all the delicacy of a divine virgin mother. “I’m so sorry.” 

“It’s been months, Liv. I should be over it by now.”

She sighed, but it was a sympathetic sigh, directed, Jack imagined, at the Pacific Ocean that separated them, rather than at her heartsick little brother. 

“Most people don’t have to go on world tours with their exes. They don’t have to share tour buses and private plans and dressing rooms and stages.” 

“They won’t let us sit next to each other,” said Jack. “I tried to explain to Luna that it’s over, that there’s no point in separating us, but she said there was nothing she could do. Peter wants to play it safe, like we’re some kind of liability. Like we’re animals or something.” He got up off the bed and wandered to the window. Peeling open the curtains, he looked out at the violet lights of a city that felt painfully artificial, nothing like the cobblestones and gray canals of Amsterdam. “And all it does is remind me how pointless it is, how Leo can’t stand to look at me. I  _ wish  _ we needed to be separated, that the pull between us was still there, but it’s gone, and that distance they force us to keep is just a constant reminder of how uncharged the air is. I mean, he doesn’t feel anything for me, Liv. It’s like I don’t exist to him. I keep forgetting that I didn’t hurt him. I didn’t do anything. He kissed me that night, and when Kyle saw us, I didn’t say anything. He was the one who denied it, who couldn’t stand to touch me with Kyle standing there.  _ He  _ hurt  _ me _ , Olivia, so why is it that he feels nothing, and I’m a guilty mess two years after the fact?” 

“I guarantee he’s a guilty mess too,” she said. 

“He doesn’t show it.”

“Have men ever been adept at displaying their feelings?”

Jack groaned. “So, we’re on the same page? We’re moving in together?” 

“Go to sleep, Jack.” 

“I’m not tired.” He let all his limbs go slack and then tensed them again. The waterbed sloshed beneath him. 

“Well, I’m tired of listening to you whine,” said Olivia, but then her voice softened. “Hey, I love you.” 

“I love you too, I guess.”

“Shut up. I’m glad you called me.” 

He rolled onto his back again, and the popcorn ceiling looked more like abstract art than a prison cell wall. “Me too.” 

When he hung up, Olivia still lingered in the air around him. The hurt was still there, but her distant perfume masked it for a little while at least. Fully clothed and on top of the covers, Jack fell asleep. He didn’t dream of Leo, but instead of the ocean. He was on a boat going nowhere on a gray sea, but the sky was violet and full of hope, and the air smelled like his sister and, by extension, like home. 

As the band’s profile rose and rose with each album, Jack found fewer and fewer chances to slip away. Even when he did, it was rare that he found a spot where no one would wander past and find him and Spencer there. They were reaching levels of fame where even the old people walking their tiny dogs recognized them.  _ My granddaughter loves you guys _ , they would say with such sincerity and unabashed joy that Jack couldn’t help but drop whatever he was doing and take a photo or sign a fast food receipt some well-meaning grandmother had found crumpled in her pocket. Jack was lucky, he realized, that the dangers he avoided were people who adored him, but there reached a point at which adoration grew oppressive. 

So when Jack stumbled across a lot of abandoned cars on the outskirts of the city he couldn’t help but peer through the chain link fence that separated him from precious anonymity. And when he noticed an adolescent-male-sized hole in that chain link fence, he had no choice but to text Spencer. Jack waited leaning against a rusted streetlight with a dark hood pulled over his curls. They had gone the entire tour without finding a spot. He worried Spencer wouldn’t come. Maybe he didn’t pack his paint this time, or maybe at twenty, he simply felt too mature for vandalism. But fifteen minutes later, a figure stepped into the orange pool of the streetlight holding a duffel bag and a steaming cup of coffee. He handed it to Jack. It was warm out, and Jack didn’t drink coffee, but he took it. 

“Thanks, man.”

“Hey, you found the spot. It’s me who should be thanking you.” 

Jack took a sip of the coffee. It tasted like tar. 

“Hits the spot,” he said. They communed in a silent toast, Jack with his styrofoam cup and Spencer with a can of pink spray paint. The hollow sound, which anywhere else would have been, imperceptible echoed across the lot. 

Spencer painted for a while on the side of a beat-up white panel van. The dirt around it was speckled with pieces of glass from the smashed windshield. Jack heard his mom’s voice in his head and almost told Spencer to watch where he stepped, but he stopped. They were grownups now, and he couldn’t afford to ruin the kind of quiet moment he’d been craving for weeks. When he realized his cup was still full, Jack dumped some coffee onto the ground when Spencer’s back was turned and used his shoe to cover the puddle with gravel. Like always, he couldn’t tell what Spencer was drawing, and no matter how hard he squinted and tilted his head from side to side, he wouldn’t know until Spencer told him in a hushed voice as they walked slowly back to the hotel. This time, though, Jack didn’t have to drag it out. Spencer dropped an empty can and turned. 

“It’s a farewell blessing,” he said. 

Jack saw it now. The pink crater that took up the center panel was a hand, while the lines that danced around its edges told of motion.  _ Vale _ , he had scrawled across the bottom. 

“It’s Latin,” Spencer said when Jack’s eyes dropped to the word. 

“Goodbye.” Spencer nodded, and something chilled in Jack. Despite the taste, he wished he had more coffee to grind out the cold, but his cup was empty. “Have you told anyone yet?” 

“Just you, I guess.” Spence kicked at the glass with his toe. Jack mumbled something about torn rubber, and he stopped. “It’s not about you,” he said. “It’s not about any of y’all. It’s me. I need space. I need to grow.” He cleared his throat. “I need to move on.” 

Jack almost ran. He felt his knees buckled to brace for it, his lungs took in an extra gulp of air, but he willed himself to stay, to hold Spencer’s gaze. He wished Spencer had spray painted a wall instead. He imagined the car being smashed to pieces and used for scrap metal, or repaired and driven away to transport boring goods to a boring destination.  _ Muffins _ , Jack imagined initially, but that was too pretty. He decided instead on paper, picturing the truck that brought deliveries to the print shop back home. The waving hand and its Latin ornament would be painted over, and when the doors were swung open and the printer paper unloader for some print shop somewhere in Tokyo, no one would know that there had once been a message on the van, that it had once served as a bittersweet canvas. 

But Jack didn’t say all this to Spencer, who continued to glare at him from beneath his hood.  _ But it is about me _ , he wanted to tell him.  _ Because if you need to move on, then what does it say about me if I stay?  _ Only when Spencer’s glare softened to a stare did Jack muster the courage to speak, did his rage melt to something like compassion. 

“Okay,” he said. “I get it.” 

He helped Spencer pack up the cans and held the fence for him while he crawled through. Now that the meaning of the mural was revealed, there was nothing for Jack to ask about, so they walked down the sidewalk in silence, both with tight fists buried in their pockets. 

They made it back to the hotel as the sun was rising. 

“I’m gonna miss you, man,” said Spencer, but it was too soon. Jack took his outstretched hand, but he only shook it. He didn’t let Spencer envelop him in one of those man hugs that inherently suggested there was something weak about loving someone with your whole body. 

“I’ll miss you too,” Jack said, because it was the truth, and speaking truth was a luxury he savored whenever he could. 

“Hey,” Spencer caught Jack by the sleeve as they parted ways in the hall. “Don’t let the man tell you who to be.” 

Jack wasn’t sure if he meant Peter or something bigger—an idea, a force. 

“Too late,” said Jack as he tore his arm away and disappeared into the gray of his popcorn walled cell. He fell asleep on his waterbed again, but this time he didn’t dream of the sea. He dreamt of rain and wind and storm that refused to flood the world, but resolved instead to drench it to the bone. 

Spencer booked a flight to Chicago in secret. In the end, Jack loaned him cash for a cab and vowed one more time not to tell anyone. It was a different kind of secret, one Jack could handle as a final memento of their friendship which perhaps had begun to border on brotherhood. When Spencer knocked on his door three hours after they’d last seen each other, Jack was too relieved to say no. He peeled the bills out of his wallet without thinking and handed them over almost gratefully. After another hour passed, someone knocked on Jack’s door again. He knew it wasn’t Spencer, that Spencer would already be at the airport, but he hoped it would be anyway. 

“Where the hell did he go?” Kyle must’ve been at the gym because his t-shirt was drenched with dark rings. A pair of headphones clung to his neck. 

Jack rubbed his eyes. “Where did who go?” 

“Spencer. He was supposed to meet me for a lift this morning, and he didn’t show up. I started without him, but after a while I got worried. I knocked on his door and he’s not answering, so either he’s dead in there or he’s gone.” 

“Alright, alright, calm down. I’m sure he’s fine.” Jack stepped out into the hallway, which was oppressively bright for that hour in the morning. 

Kyle pulled out his phone and swung the screen wildly in Jack’s face. “He’s not answering my texts either.” 

“Did you wake the other guys?” 

“No,” said Kyle. He knit his eyebrows together and folded his arms. Jack couldn’t decide if he looked more like a lost child or that lost child’s mother. He made a fist and tapped Kyle lightly on the arm, feeling the masculine-feminine tightrope tremble beneath him. Luckily, Kyle was too worried to notice. 

“Hey, hey, listen. Let’s take some deep breaths. We’ll wake Ronan and Leo and see if they’ve heard anything. Does that sound good?”  _ God, I sound like my mother.  _ He put his arm around Kyle and guided him down the hall. Kyle nodded as they went and released his arms to his side where they stayed in fists all the way to Ronan’s door. 

Secrets didn’t count in families. It was true when Kyle found Jack and Leo together on the tour bus, and it was true now. Jack remembered that truth the moment he saw Ronan mirror Kyle’s body language—the knitted brow and folded arms, the mindless nodding at every empty reassurance. 

Jack gathered the three of them in his room. Leo fought Ronan for a seat on the bed, and the normalcy was comforting. While they bickered, Jack opened the blinds. The light was harsh. It uncovered their violet under eyes and morning stubble. Leo, having lost the battle, sat on the floor biting his cuticles, which Jack saw now were stripped and bloodied. Without Spencer brooding in the corner, there was no one to balance out their collective freneticism, no unmoving stone to whirl around and poke incessant fun at. The room was quiet and still, but for the tiny nervous movements that uncertainty spurs—Leo’s cuticles, Kyle nodding, Ronan brushing the carpet with the sole of his sneaker. 

Jack stood in front of the TV and laced his hands together behind his head. 

“Spence isn’t coming back.” 

Ronan spoke up in an instant, his foot settling firmly on the ground. “What does that mean? Where did he go?” His gaze shot to the others, then back to Jack. “We have a show tonight,” he said. 

“He’s leaving the band,” Jack said quietly, his gaze falling to the sheets glowing oppressively white under the morning light. 

“He can’t just leave the band,” said Kyle. “It’s been four years. He can’t just leave in the middle of a tour and not tell anyone, not even ask us what we think.” Kyle stood up, then sat back down, deflated. “Wait,” he said. “How do you know?”

Jack let his hands fall. He shrugged, the gesture felt inadequate. “He asked me for cab money.”

“Oh, of course,” Kyle stood up again and paced the room, his arms flailing between each word. “He asked you for cab money so he could flee in the middle of our tour without telling anyone and you  _ gave it to him _ .” He stopped in front of Jack and narrowed his eyes. “Were you gonna tell us? If I hadn’t knocked on your door this morning, were you just planning to keep it a secret? What was your plan when we got onstage and Spencer  _ wasn’t there _ ? Were you just gonna sing his solos and hope no one noticed? You’re not a good enough liar for that, Jack, and you sure as hell aren’t a good enough singer.” 

“Hey,” Leo bolted to his feet. He got between the two of them, and put a hand to Kyle’s chest. “You gotta calm down. This isn’t Jack’s fault, and he’s telling us now, isn’t he?” Leo didn’t look toward Jack, only nodded in his direction. Kyle’s breathing slowed and he took a step back. Leo let his hand fall. “I know this sucks, but I can’t be the only one who saw it coming.”

Ronan raised his hand from the bed. “I did,” he said. “He hardly talks to any of us anymore. He drifts through the shows like he’s only half there. He wears his headphones like their a fucking oxygen supplier.” Only when his voice cracked did Jack notice that Ronan was crying. The room tensed as the others noticed. A sacred threshold had been crossed. Too much humanity was on display, but Jack spoke up before they could retreat. 

“It feels like he abandoned us,” said Jack quickly. “And it feels like he thinks he’s better than we are because he’s moved on.” 

Kyle let out a low laugh. “It feels like shit,” he said. 

Leo stayed quiet, though the three of them looked to him—the oldest and most outspoken of the group. His lips stayed in a tight line. His eyes fixated on a lampshade. Jack cleared his throat to fill the void that threatened to swallow them. 

“But we know Spencer.” His voice was softer now. “He’s quiet. He likes to be alone. He likes space to think and breathe. We all knew that from the beginning. It’s not fair to expect him to keep doing something he doesn’t love.” 

Leo raised a finger. “I, for one, also like thinking and breathing.” 

“Jesus, you know what I meant,” Jack snapped. He’d never spoken to him that way before. Leo retreated into himself, studying his fingertips again with solemn focus. Jack inhaled. “We’ve got a show to do tonight. Everyone in this room loves what he does. Yes, it sucks sometimes, and, yes, we just got gut-punched by someone we care about, but we still love singing together, and that’s what we’re gonna do.” It felt like an ending. Kyle and Ronan nodded and made their way toward the door, each patting Jack on the shoulder on their way out. Leo lingered behind. 

“Nice speech, coach,” he said with a nod. Jack couldn’t tell if Leo was making fun of him or building him up, and the not knowing made his cheeks burn. He turned toward the window to hide the color flooding there, but Leo grabbed him by the elbow. Jack couldn’t remember the last time Leo had reached for him. The contact made his skin prickle. “I’m sorry,” he said, though he didn’t meet Jack’s eye. 

The anger that had yet to die down spurred Jack to ask. 

“For what?” 

_ Spencer _ , Leo should’ve said. The easy answer was there for the taking. 

“Everything,” he said instead. It would’ve been worth something if he hadn’t sped for the door in the next instant, leaving Jack alone to bathe in the dizzying geometries that the light cast about the room. Spencer’s plane should be in the air by now, Jack realized, and the thought was a comfort. Someone was moving on. 


	13. Winter 2015

The only positive outcome from Spencer’s absence was their new formation on stage. No one stood in the middle anymore. It was a small change, but it eased a tension Jack hadn’t known was there before. Their sound was thinner and their songs a few steps longer, but at least they all stood on even ground. 

He asked Luna about it one morning over coffee. More to prove something to himself than to Luna, he’d invited her to his favorite place on the West End on a Sunday afternoon. He was lonely, yes, and wanted someone to talk to, but sending that email to her felt like restructuring a hierarchy. He, too, could hold the conductor’s baton, if only in that small way. _It’s been too long_ , he had written after asking about her new record label. _We should catch up. I want to hear all about Luna Records._ She used her first name because Peter already had a monopoly on her last. Satisfied to the point of smugness, Jack had typed in the subject line _Coffee?_ And signed the message _All the best._ She responded that her next free morning was in three weeks. It was good enough for Jack. He could wait. 

“I always asked the choreographers to put you in the middle,” said Luna. Jack had recommended she order a chocolate croissant. She agreed, but now picked the bread apart like parts of it were moldy. 

“You what?”

“You always sell yourself short, Jack.” She finally tore off a piece and popped it in her mouth. It occurred to him that after five years he’d never really watched Luna eat before. It felt like something he wasn’t meant to see, like walking in on someone undressed. He’d had the same feeling when Luna turned up at the coffee shop exactly on time, wearing ripped jeans and a green army jacket. Yes, she had dressed up the look with ankle boots and earrings that dangled like planets just above her shoulders, her hair twisted in a golden scarf, but she looked nothing like the Luna he had grown accustomed to—done up with red lipstick and tailored pants suits. “You don’t see what the world sees in you,” she went on. 

“But Spencer—” He choked on his words, but Luna interrupted. 

“Spencer’s got the voice, yes. Everyone knows that. But no one in their right mind can keep their eyes off of you.” 

Leo. His mind’s response was immediate and paralyzing. Leo hadn’t looked Jack in the eye in at least a year. All those other gazes didn’t mean anything. They were too abstract in their enormous collectivity to evoke something like pride in Jack. He took a sip of his coffee. He hated coffee, but he’d ordered it to keep up with the act. It was hot enough that he couldn’t really taste it, but it left his tongue throbbing. He buried a grimace in his napkin. Luna took the opportunity to continue heaping praise. 

“You’re a natural performer. I spotted it the first time I heard you sing in the cabin. What was that, five years ago? And you’ve only gotten better since then. You shine on stage. You love what you do, and you don’t hide it. That’s a gift. It’s one thing to be humble, it’s another to turn your back on the truth. The truth is that you’ve got it. Plain and simple.” Luna was raising her voice now, and although Jack had picked out a spot that was something of a haven for celebrities, that security only went so far. Paparazzi wouldn’t peer beneath sunglasses or oversized hats, but heads still turned toward the black woman screaming at the world’s favorite white boy. Luna tore off the smallest flake of her croissant and chewed it like it was a wad of taffy, her expression calm and dignified. By the time she swallowed, the shop had fallen back into its natural rhythm. She dabbed her face with a napkin and lowered her voice. 

“Like I said, folks can’t keep their eyes off of you.” 

“Some folks definitely can,” he mumbled with his head pointed toward his lap. The collapse was a welcome surrender to what he was—a brokenhearted kid. He was twenty, yes, and a global superstar, but he was tired of living alone and evoking screams and hiding from cameras. And though it seemed smaller than the rest of it, what drained him most was existing in the same spaces as Leo. No stadium was big enough for the dark fluid that churned in the in-between. Jack marveled that no one else had noticed it by now, because with each show his slow suffocation progressed as the dark stuff filled his lungs. 

Luna set down her cup with a delicate clink. She leaned across the table. 

“Are you alright, Jack?” 

Jack wiped his face with the back of his hand, as though smearing off the dark fluid that seemed to seep from his eyes and nose. Luna, of course, saw none of this, Jack reminded himself. She saw only a twenty-year-old kid sitting in front of a six-dollar coffee that he had hardly touched and a chocolate croissant that he had recommended despite his never having tried one before. 

He shook his head. The story came out easier than he’d expected, at first in small bursts, and then all at once so he couldn’t slow it down. 

“I had no idea,” Luna said, leaning her elbows on the table. The coffeeshop crowd had transitioned from breakfast to lunch—old men with newspapers had shuffled out, while crowds of millennials having loud conversations were strutting up to the counter and slinging expensive bags over their chairs. 

Perhaps out of a sense of powerlessness, Luna had eaten her entire croissant over the course of Jack’s pouring his guts onto the table. It was a way of showing him he could do something right, and, though he saw through her intention, Jack was grateful for the unspoken offering. Luna kneaded her forehead with her finger and thumb. 

“You had no way of knowing,” said Jack. It was the best he could muster. He felt hollow. His muscles ached like he had physically pulled something out of himself. He wanted water, but couldn’t bring himself to get up. 

“I should’ve paid attention,” said Luna, her eyes darting everywhere but toward Jack himself. “When Peter brought in Anna, I wasn’t fully on board, but I didn't object either. I mean, I thought you and Leo were just close friends who were fooling around, figuring shit out. She helped with the band’s image. Everyone moved on. I hadn’t thought about it since then, really. You and Leo haven’t been as— I don’t know, but bandmates grow apart. It’s natural. I’ve seen it a hundred times. I didn’t question it.” 

“I didn’t tell you all this so you could feel bad. I just told you this because—” He paused. “Because I wanted to tell Peter, but I didn’t have the guts, and you’re the closest thing I could think of. I didn’t plan to tell you either. It just came out, I guess. I didn’t invite you here for a therapy session. I really wanted to see you and talk to you, but then you were sitting there looking so kind and so  _ normal  _ and you asked me if I was okay, and I decided to tell you the truth. I don’t know. I’m sorry.” He gestured towards the empty table, feeling inadequate, wishing he could take it all back. Luna reached for his hand. He let her take it. 

“I want you to know that from now on you can be whoever you want to be.” Jack tried to pull away, but she held on harder. “No, listen. You can  _ love  _ whoever you want to love. That’s my promise. I’ll talk to Peter, okay? There will be parameters, I’m sure. He’ll want you to keep things quiet, but I’m sure we can work something out. I’m positive.” She squeezed for emphasis. 

“No, Luna.” She finally let him wrestle his hand back. He fiddled with a coffee stirrer, drumming it against the table and sweeping at stray grains of sugar. “You don’t have to do that. Don’t talk to Peter. There’s no point, anyway. Leo is with Anna, and he’s happy.” 

Luna leaned down, finally forcing their eyes to meet. “Do you honestly believe that?”

He shook his head. “I have to.” 

Jack reached for the bill, but Luna had already paid for them both without him noticing. It was a final sting that, like the rest of their morning, rang with tenderness too. He hugged her in the street.

Luna pulled away, but kept her hands on Jack’s shoulders. “Look, when this is all over, I want you to know you have a place at my label.” 

“At Peter’s label?”

She lowered her voice as a crowd of people passed by on the street. “At  _ my  _ label. Luna Records would sign you in a second, Jack. Keep that in mind.”

“But the band… ” said Jack, letting his voice trail off.

“Keep it in mind.” 

She hugged him one more time, and Jack let himself be comforted by her words and her arms around him, but the hollow feeling persisted all the way home. 

Jack dropped a dumbbell on his foot when he heard a knock at his apartment door. The building had a doorman who was a former linebacker, and, besides that, no one knew where he lived. He’d only ever hosted his mom, and even then he’d driven her there from the airport himself. So, when three knocks echoed out through his apartment, he froze mid-bicep curl. He was scrawny, if tall, so the weight was light, and it only caught two of his toes, but the painful shock of it rattled him. He wiped the sweat from his forehead with his t-shirt, turned off his music, and crept to the door clutching a dumbbell in one hand as a makeshift weapon, just to be on the safe side. He pulled the thing back over his head as he swung the door open. 

“I’d be game, but I don’t think dumbbell versus milkshake would be a fair fight.” 

“Hey.” Jack took a step back and opened the door wider. Leo stepped inside. He handed Jack a to-go cup with a thick straw. 

“It’s strawberry,” he said. 

“Thanks.” Instinctively, he took a sip. It was a little melted, but still sweet and cold. 

“You can lower that thing at any time.”

“Oh.” Jack set the dumbbell on the kitchen table and wiped his palms on his shorts. “I didn’t know you were coming over. You didn’t call or anything.”

“We lived together for two years. Do I really have to call to get permission?” 

Jack didn’t know what to say. The answer seemed obvious, but Leo’s mind was somewhere else. He ran his fingers along the spines of Jack’s books, then picked up a Rubik’s cube from the end of the shelf. 

“I used to be really good at solving these,” he said. 

“What happened?” asked Jack. 

Leo shrugged. “I ran out of space for it in my brain, I guess. Filled it in with other stuff.”

“I bet you could solve it if you tried.”

“Time me?” Leo grinned. Wordless and breathless, Jack pulled out his phone. 

It took Leo two minutes and seventeen seconds. He set the finished cube down on the kitchen table beside the dumbbell when he finished. 

“Little rusty,” he said. 

“I’m still impressed.” 

Leo was restless now that he didn’t have anything to do with his hands. He paced back and forth, swinging one foot in front of the other as he walked a frame around the carpet’s edge. Jack was grateful for the movement. He felt frozen in place. 

“Why are you here?” he finally managed. 

“What, a bandmate can’t just drop in on another bandmate?”

Jack couldn’t help himself. He laughed.

“Okay, fine.” Leo stopped pacing. “I got an email from Peter today. I didn’t even know he had my email. The whole thing was weird.”

“What did he say?” Jack tried to sound casual, but his voice was shaking. He set down the milkshake and poured himself a glass of water, but remembered Leo was a guest and offered it to him first. He shook his head, so Jack downed it in three gulps. Only when he was finished did Leo speak again, which only set Jack further on edge. 

“He said you had a chat with Luna.” 

Jack groaned at the ceiling. “I told her not to talk to him about it.” 

“He said we can be a couple if we want, as long as we keep it a secret.” Leo smiled a dry smile. It made Jack feel small. 

“Leo, I was just venting,” he said quietly. “This wasn’t my intention.” 

“I’m sorry about what happened between us.” Leo’s voice came out colder than before, and Jack found himself wishing for the cruel smile back. He looked down at his feet and noticed he was standing beside the stove. A jolt shot through his spine. “But it was a long time again.” Another jolt. “Anna and I are happy.” 

“And you and Anna don’t have to be a secret,” Jack mumbled. He fiddled with the burners, letting them each  _ click click click _ , but twisting them back before the flame burst out. 

Leo’s eyes shot up from the counter, going to Jack’s chest but not his eyes. “You know that’s not why.” 

“How would I know that, Leo?” Jack took a step toward where he stood at the edge of the carpet. “You never talk to me. You never told me why you didn’t want to try anymore. Now you can barely even look at me.” At the last word, he flung his hand out and knocked the milkshake off the counter. 

“I’m sorry,” said Leo. He bent down to pick up the cup. Pink was oozing outward over the carpet. Leo’s cheeks flushed the same color. He reached for a roll of paper towels beside the sink and tore off sheet after sheet. “Shit, I’m sorry,” he said again. 

“It’s not your fault. I’m the one who knocked it over. You were just standing there” Jack knelt beside him. They mopped at the stain in silence. Eventually, Jack got up and came back with a trash bag. He held it out for Leo, who dropped in towels, dripping and soaked pink. When all that remained was a faint shadow of the puddle, Leo sat back, his elbows resting on his knees. Jack leaned back on his heels. 

“Why are you here?” Jack asked again. He realized their knees were touching, ever so slightly. By the time he looked down, Leo had moved an inch backward. He was still rubbing at the carpet with his thumb, but the stain was stubborn. “Forget the stain, Leo. What’s going on?” 

He sighed. “Look, Anna saw the email and it freaked her out.” Leo focused his eyes on the ground, but eventually caught himself and brought his gaze up to meet Jack’s. His face was softer now, his features almost relaxed. “She knows about us,” he said like a small secret. “And I told her it was completely over, but Peter’s email made it sound like you were still in love with me or something. It was like he was giving us the green light on something I hadn’t signed up for.”

Jack rocked his head back and forth. “It was more like a yellow light.” 

Leo shook his head, but he stayed there on the floor beside Jack. “That’s not the point,” he said.

“What is the point?”

“I need you to tell Peter and Luna that there’s nothing going on. Otherwise, they’ll treat us like secret lovers or something.” He planted his pointer finger on the carpet like he was plotting out a course on a map. “I have a girlfriend, Jack. We’ve been dating for three years now.”

Again, he threw his head back to laugh. It felt good to be honest, even if it meant being mean. He needed to laugh, and he needed the power and release it brought. “You really consider that first year dating?”

“What would you call it?” 

“An act? A show? A scam?” 

Leo stood up. “Will you please just talk to them and tell them the truth?”

“I already did,” said Jack. Recognition flashed across his face. Leo towered above Jack now, but it comforted him to know that he could stand up whenever he wanted and instantly have the upper hand. Leo knew this, but he also knew how Jack needed grounding, how even a stained carpet could be a life preserver. Jack’s hands were trembling again. His memory was ruthless, flashing back to Leo clutching his fingers in the dark folds of some backstage in some city.  _ You’re the best of us _ , he would whisper into Jack’s palms. 

Leo threw his hands up in a halfhearted surrender. 

“What do you want me to do, Jack?” 

Finally, Jack stood up. His knees were red and rubbed raw from kneeling on the carpet. He shook his head as he wiped the dust from his skin there. 

“What do you want?” Leo stepped closer.

“Go home,” said Jack. He plucked the Rubik’s cube from the table and handed it to Leo.

“I know what you want, Jack.” Leo held onto the thing with both hands. Jack could make out where the skin was pulled so tight that it had turned white. 

“Thanks for the milkshake.” He opened the door and tapped his foot, his tendons suddenly charged with electricity, but Leo didn’t move. Something surging in Jack finally broke free of its circuit. A spark was all it took. Jack ignited, slamming the door and walking toward Leo until they were face to face, chest to chest. Jack heaved and snarled, but Leo didn’t flinch. 

“Fine, Leo. Fuck you. Fine. I’ll ask you straight up, alright?” Jack took a step back, but then swung himself back again, as though he needed the momentum. “Why can’t we be together? I was the happiest I’ve ever been when we were— whatever the hell we were. Okay? Is that better? I drank your milkshake, I’ll talk to Peter if you want, and I asked the question.” 

When Leo inhaled, Jack had to will himself to stay rooted, to not drift toward the breath’s hollow source.

“You can’t just ask me to love you,” he said softly. 

Jack stepped back. He matched Leo’s calm. 

“I’m not asking you to love me, Leo. I’m asking you to love yourself.” 

Leo opened his mouth, but when Jack opened the door, he walked through it without saying a word. 


	14. Fall 2010

The porch was covered from edge to edge with old newspapers. Leo craned his neck to read one that was spread out upside-down. 

“ _ Local man marries basset hound _ ,” he recited. 

Jack shrugged and leaned against the chain of the old porch swing. When he was seven, he’d ridden it like a surfboard, fallen off, and cut open his lip. Now the thing looked too rickety to sit on, but his mom had kept the cushions clean and new. Jack ran his hand over the blue fabric. 

“More people should read the local news. It’s juicy stuff.” 

Leo smoothed a folded edge with the toe of his sneaker. He was wearing bright orange converse and the same skinny jeans he wore on stage. Jack’s favorite part, though, was the striped sweater he’s pulled over a button down. His hands were buried in the pockets of a corduroy jacket. He looked like he’d walked out of a department store catalogue, and Jack, in his sweatshirt and poorly-fitted khaki pants, told him so. 

“Only the best to meet the parents.” He winked as he took off his wool hat with the braids and slipped it in his duffel bag. It was a joke that had started with Ronan calling them an old married couple. Leo quickly leaned into it, linking arms with Jack on the sidewalk or fixing his hair when it stuck up in a curled cowlick at the crown of his head. 

“Parent,” Jack corrected. 

Now, standing on his own front porch, Jack couldn’t decide whether or not to ring his own doorbell. He’d only been away for a few months, but, after their first single had hit number one, he had enough money in his bank account to buy the place twice over. He had expected a sense of security and confidence to come along with it. So far he still felt like a little kid playing pretend for the first five minutes of every show. He still blushed when his best friend gave him a compliment, even if it was as simple as  _ I like your shirt _ . The band only had the weekend off, but Jack had been dreaming of those two days for weeks. Staring at hotel ceilings, he imagined throwing his front door open and kicking off his shoes. Now, though, his front door was narrower than he remembered, and Leo was watching his hand linger in the air between the doorbell and the handle. 

Jack was grateful when he didn’t have to decide. His mom pushed open the screen door. Both she and the rusty hinges let out a simultaneous squeal. 

“My baby is home!” she cried into his shoulder, half sincere and half for the drama of it. Leo laughed while he stood by with his hands still in his pockets. Had their roles been reversed, Jack would’ve wandered off the porch and looked away, too ashamed to watch something vulnerable unfold, even if it was the good kind of vulnerable. But Leo wasn’t like that. He beamed. When Rebecca finally emerged, she didn’t waste a moment before enveloping Leo in an embrace of the same warmth and intensity. “We’re so, so glad to have you, Leo. Jack has told me so much about you.” He hugged her back like he’d been expecting it, and it was Jack’s turn to stand by with his hands in his pockets. “He’s never made a friend this fast before. It’s such a comfort to know he has you looking out for him.” 

Jack raised a finger. “I would like to say that I’ve made many friends at various speeds.”

Leo waved a hand in his direction. “Yeah, yeah, Mr. Popular. We get it.” 

“I mean it, Leo,” Rebecca said into his shoulder. “Thank you.”

The rest of the boys had gone back home for the weekend, but Leo’s family was on vacation in the Bahamas. 

“It’s my fault,” he told Jack on a late drive home from a show. “I offered to buy them the tickets to celebrate the first single.” 

“And they picked your one weekend off to go?” He asked in a whisper, so as not to wake the other three who were sleeping in the backseat. Kyle was snoring, and Jack could make out the low pounding of bass from Spencer’s oversized headphones. 

Leo shrugged. “The weather’s nice down there this time of year.”

“The weather’s always nice in the Bahamas.” 

Leo curled closer to the window. It was raining and Jack watched his gaze follow a heavy raindrop from the top of the glass all the way to the bottom. By the time it disappeared, Jack had decided. Leo said no at first, in a polite sort of way, but Jack could tell from the start that he wanted to come. His excuses were half-hearted and a hidden smile trembled against his upper lip. It didn’t take long to convince him. He laughed when they finally settled it. 

“What?” Jack asked, as Leo traced another raindrop with his fingernail. 

“I feel like Harry Potter when he went to stay at the Weasley’s.” 

Jack tilted his head to the side and frowned. “But your family isn’t full of muggles who hate you. They’re just on vacation.” 

“Yeah,” Leo said softly. He rested his forehead against the glass, but Jack felt a phantom of the cold against his own. “Yeah, you’re right.” 

“What’s with all the newspapers, Mrs. T?” Leo asked when she finally pulled away. 

“Jack didn’t tell you?” She elbowed him in the ribs. “We’re carving pumpkins!” 

Olivia pushed open the door with her foot. She had one under each arm and made a show of huffing and puffing as she lugged them to the edge of the porch. She set them down and put her hands on her hips. 

“Liv!” Jack threw down his bag to pick her up and spin her around. 

“Put me down, you oaf. I did not come all the way from UVA to be manhandled by my little brother.” Olivia wrestled her way free, all elbows and kneecaps, but once she was on the ground she smiled the smallest of smiles and pulled Jack into another hug. “I missed you,” she added. 

“Hm, oaf,” Leo said to himself. “I’ll have to use that one.”

“You’re Leo?”

Jack rolled his eyes. “Don’t pretend you don’t know who he is.” He leaned toward Leo. “She’d probably got a cardboard cutout of you in her dorm room.”

“She looks just like you,” Leo said softly. Jack smiled, but Olivia groaned. It was true. They both had their dad’s dark, curly hair, their mom’s lopsided smile, and a dimple on their left cheek with no clear origin. 

“Well, it’s nice to meet you.” Olivia stuck out her hand an arms length away, but Leo disregarded the move and hugged her. 

“There’s two more pumpkins inside-” Jack’s mom began to say, but Leo was already through the door and back out in an instant, a globe under each arm. He held one out to Jack with a trembling hand.

“This one’s the best,” he said. “No dents or spots or anything.”

Jack took the pumpkin and set it down at his feet. He could feel himself blushing, but there was no point in hiding it. His mom and sister could spot any emotion on his face from a mile away. Olivia took the other pumpkin from Leo. 

“I, for one, want my pumpkin to be as dented and spotted as possible. I want a misfit.” 

Leo turned to Jack. “She’s a saint.” Olivia already had the pumpkin between her knees and a knife buried in the top beside the stem. When she got it open, she began heaping seeds and guts onto the newspaper. A glob of orange splattered onto Leo’s sneaker. He smiled downward and held up his foot. “Hey, it matches perfectly!”

“I’m glad you’re here,” Jack said quietly once his mother had disappeared inside for more carving tools, insisting on taking a duffel bag on each shoulder. 

Jack had run with the cool crowd in high school, but the months since he’d sat in a cafeteria, since starting with the band, felt like years. Leo was different from the kids he went to school with. Leo was cool in an effortless sort of way, cool enough to wear bright orange sneakers and spout facts about planetary astronomy on the tour bus. There was nothing self-conscious about him. At eighteen, he transcended all that, but Jack recognized it wasn’t about age. Leo had something glowing inside him that kept out the dark and bathed everyone around him in light. Jack had to look away before Leo answered because he felt that heat burning in his cheeks again, but Leo didn’t look away. Jack could feel his eyes on the back of his neck turned toward the ground. 

“Me too,” he said, and Jack let the heat wash over him, let it bloom down deep where he knew, even then, that it would keep unfurling and unfurling and unfurling. 

Jack was too dazed to remember whether he or Leo had suggested they try out the porch swing. Olivia had told the story of Jack plummeting from its heights. The stitches were her favorite part. 

“He made me hold his hand while they gave him the shot of lidocaine.” She gesticulated so wildly that her mom began clearing plates and glasses from the radius of Olivia’s wingspan. Rebecca had opted to make pie out of her pumpkin instead of carving it, and all that was left were scraps of crust and sips of red wine at the bottom of their glasses. Jack had asked for tea, and sipped from a chipped mug, though it was over-steeped and cold. He didn't mind. Olivia reached for Jack’s hand and stuck out her bottom lip. He let her take it, while the other stayed wrapped around his mug, a finger tied by the string of his teabag. “He was so scared.” 

Jack shot his head toward Leo. “You would’ve been too! That needle was as long as my arm.” 

“You squeezed my hand so tight that it went numb. They honestly could’ve given me the stitches and I wouldn’t have felt a thing.” 

Rebecca reached out and ruffled Jack’s hair. “He was so brave.” 

Leo nodded and kicked Jack’s foot under the table. “Sure sounds like it.”

Now his feet scraped against the worn wood of the front porch, while Leo’s barely brushed the ground. They’d cleared away the pumpkin guts and soiled newspapers, though Leo had ripped out the story about the man marrying a basset hound and tucked it into his coat pocket. 

“I was trying to impress my dad,” Jack said softly. Leo nodded, like he’d been expecting the story, though he had no way of knowing. Jack cleared his throat. “He hardly ever visited, but when he did, he would always get on my mom about coddling me, saying I was soft, that she needed to be tougher on me. I don’t know what I thought standing on the porch swing would prove, but it obviously didn’t work.” 

Jack was grateful for the gentle rhythm of the swing, grateful for its creaking to fill in the spaces between his story. 

“By the time I finally got attention, I had lost my balance. To his credit, he tried to catch me, but I hit the ground anyway, landed on my face.” He pointed to a faint scar just above his eyebrow. “My dad drove with us to the hospital, but he got a phone call before I went in to get sewed up. He said he’d be there in the waiting room when I got done. It’s stupid, but I was so excited to show him the stitches.”

Leo elbowed him in the ribs. “It’s not stupid.”

“It  _ is  _ stupid because he wasn’t there when I came out. He sent my mom a text saying a work thing had come up. We had to take a cab home. He just left. It was all for him, and he just left.” Jack exhaled and kicked his feet to push the swing higher. Jack wouldn’t have been able to speak so many truths without the rhythm of the squeaking chain. Its steady beat calmed him and drowned out the silence of the in-between. 

“I’m sorry your dad is a dick,” said Leo. 

“I’m sorry your family is in the Bahamas.” 

“They’re not in the Bahamas,” Leo said quietly. 

“What?”

“I didn’t tell them I had the weekend off. I didn’t want to go home.” 

Jack realized he’d stopped rocking, so he started again, but he couldn’t fall back into the same rhythm as before. He willed himself to wait. If he waited, Leo would go on. If he pushed him too far, Leo would shut down.

“I love my sisters,” he said, his voice firm. Jack nodded. “I call them all the time and hear about their lives. Camilla has a boyfriend now.” He wrinkled his nose like he smelled something decomposing. Jack felt a sudden urge to reach out and touch the skin there to smooth out the folds with his pointer finger. Instead, he picked up the pace of their rocking. “It’s disgusting, but it’s great, too. It makes me happy to hear stuff like that. It makes me sad I’m missing it, but I’m not sad to not be home. Does that make sense?” Jack nodded. He rocked a little more. Leo pulled his feet up under him and sighed. “My parents are shitty. I love them, but they’re shitty.” 

“Okay,” said Jack. When Leo laughed, he wished he hadn’t said anything at all. 

Leo craned his neck to look up at the ceiling fan that whirled above them so that its blades faded into one circle. “They’re not into the whole boyband thing.” Leo coughed and lowered his voice. “In the words of my dear, articulate father,  _ Those show boys are gay, Leonard. I don’t want to see you dancing and singing in a pair of pants that might as well be ballerina tights. _ ” 

“That’s—” Jack shook his head, but the words didn’t come. Something had stopped up his throat, so he shook his head some more. “That’s just—”

Leo just smiled and drummed his palms against his knees. Jack was relieved for the new rhythm to replace the one he couldn’t seem to maintain. “Like I said, it’s shitty.”

“Yeah.” 

“Listen, Jackie.” For the first time in minutes, Leo turned to look Jack in the eye. “If the other guys ask, they’re in the Bahamas, alright?” Leo reached out his hand and they shook on it.

“I’m sorry,” Jack said. He worried he had spoken too softly, that Leo hadn’t heard him, but then he felt him shift in the swing. Their shoulders were touching now. Jack could feel the thick wool of Leo’s sweater even through the cotton of his sweatshirt sleeve, his warm weight pressing closer. 

“Don’t be,” he said. “I’m sorry I lied. I’m sorry I crashed your weekend at home.” 

_ My home is wherever you are.  _ The thought startled Jack, not just because it was the kind of thing his mother might scrawl on a note in his lunch box, but because he’d only known Leo since the summer, and the band had only had one hit single. At first, he thought he’d said it out loud, and the scare made his heartbeat accelerate. While he fought to banish the thought, Leo stood up. He pulled Jack’s arm until he had to do the same. 

“It’s time to get back on the horse,” said Leo. 

“What horse?”

“The horse is a metaphor.” He cocked his head to the side. “It’s time to get back on the porch swing.”

“We were just on the porch swing.” 

Leo groaned. “It’s time to  _ surf  _ the porch swing.” 

“Absolutely not.” 

“You’ve got bad feelings associated with this swing. It’s time to banish those bad feelings, to conquer your fears.”

Jack choked back a smile. “Leo.” 

“Jack.”

“No.”

“Fine, I guess I’ll just have to go first, then.” Leo folded his arms and raised his eyebrows. Slowly, he swaggered toward the swing. 

“Leo, don’t you dare.” 

The chain let out a shriek when Leo grabbed onto it. “Sorry, I can’t hear you over the sound of this horse I’m getting on.” 

“Leo!”

He stroked the back of the seat. “My, it has such a lovely mane.” 

This time, Jack let a laugh escape his lips in one small burst. He covered it with a cough. “Get down.” 

Leo was already up on the swing. He had to bend down so his head didn’t collide with the ceiling. He held his arms out like a surfer and rocked side to side. The swing groaned beneath his weight, but held. He hopped off and flexed both biceps. 

“Cowabunga,” he said, patting Jack on the shoulder. 

“You are a child,” Jack said, but he was already mounting the swing. He took off his sneakers first and threw them toward Leo. 

“Thank you, thank you,” he said, and held the shoe up overhead like the Stanley Cup. 

“You’re ridiculous. This is ridiculous.” 

“You’re doing it!” Jack held his arms out and gave his hips a little shake. “You’re hula dancing?” 

“Shut up!” Jack stood and smacked the top of his head on the ceiling. “Ouch.” 

Leo swept closer and held out his arms. “You’re conquering your fear! I’m so proud.” Jack let Leo help him down, trying not to focus too hard on the hand against his back, the other on his shoulder. 

He followed Leo back into the house, but first, Jack glanced back at the porch swing, still swaying slightly with the clumsy momentum of his dismount. He knew then that the swing would never remind him of stitches again, but of horses and surfing and Leo’s laugh drowning out the rusted chain’s stubborn squeal. 


	15. Spring 2015

Out of a sense of defiance more than any kind of necessity, Jack shoved a travel-sized bottle of mouthwash into his tuxedo jacket. He took a disposable comb, too, and a mint for good measure. 

“Right, because you can’t afford to buy those things.” He jumped and looked up to see Kyle fixing his platinum blonde hair in the bathroom mirror. The style was new. Tess hated the color, but Kyle had insisted, and Peter had been loosening the leash more and more lately. Leo had a tattoo on his neck. Ronan even talked about getting a nose piercing, but everyone knew he didn’t have the guts to actually do it. Jack, for his part, took to wearing silver rings and colored scarves in his hair, which had now grown nearly to his shoulders. Every time he could sense Peter about to say something, Luna would appear with a hand on his arm. Jack would smile faintly at her, his gratitude immense but oppressive. 

“God, why do they always have mints in the bathrooms at these fancy places. Why can’t there ever be snacks?” Ronan had snuck in at some point and had his hand wrist-deep in a fishbowl of mints. 

Leo stuck his head in the door. “I’ve got a Ding Dong.” Jack heard the wrapper crinkle as he pulled the package out of his pocket and held it out to Ronan. 

His eyes were wide as he snatched it away. “You’re a god, Knighten,” he said, but Leo had already disappeared into a stall. Seconds later, Jack smelled pot. Kyle chuckled to himself, but Jack’s face grew stern. 

“Are you serious, right now?” 

Smoke drifted out of the stall. Leo coughed and called out, “If you’re addressing me, then the answer is no, I am never serious about anything, especially not at stuffy award shows.” 

“I just wanted to take a piss in peace,” Jack said, more to the sink than to anyone else in the bathroom. His voice echoed off the porcelain.  _ This would be a nice place to sing _ . The thought drifted into his head. It made him sad. 

“I was bored,” said Kyle as he picked up a comb and ran it through his hair. 

Ronan spoke up with his mouth full, “I saw you and Kyle get up, so I thought we were having a meeting or something.”

“I wanted to get high,” Leo shouted from the stall. 

Jack shook his head. “This isn’t working.” 

“I know. I feel oddly lucid.” Leo wandered out of the stall, holding a blunt between two fingers. “Ronan, where did you get this stuff?”

“Tess’s son,” he said. 

Leo punched him in the arm “You bought weed from  _ Tess’s son _ ? She’s gonna kill us.” He went back to flush the blunt down the toilet. “Jesus,” he muttered when he emerged. Ronan shrugged. 

“This isn’t working,” Jack said again, this time raising his voice above the bickering. Jack wasn’t one to yell. Even more so in the past year, he’d retreated into himself to the point of invisibility. The three of them turned toward him, their expressions suddenly grave. Jack tucked his hair behind his ears, fidgeted with the sleeve of his tuxedo. “We can’t do this anymore. We’re sad. We’re exhausted. We fight all the time. I mean, for the first time, our job feels like  _ a job _ . I don’t know why, but it’s not working anymore.” 

Jack’s chest rose and fell in a steady rhythm. It felt good to say what they’d all been thinking for months, but once the adrenaline drained from his veins and his breath slowed, a wave of regret rolled in. The silence faded from poignant to suffocating. As he stepped toward the door, Ronan spoke up. 

“It’s time for us to move on,” he said. “That’s what Spencer said, wasn’t it? Maybe now it’s time for us too.” 

Kyle glanced back at Leo, who was leaning against the stall door and staring up at the ceiling tiles, his hand in his pockets. 

“Maybe it is,” he said, but his voice carried the faintest shake. 

“Leo?” Jack caught his eye in the mirror. 

He lifted his head off the stall, then let it fall back with a thud. “Whatever you guys want.” He sighed. 

“We’re a team,” said Jack, though he felt foolish.  _ Good speech, coach _ , he heard Leo saying, but he went on anyway. “We decide together.” He glanced at Kyle and Ronan, who gave him firm nods in unison. He wanted to hug them, but it wasn’t something they did anymore. He couldn’t remember the last time they’d all played a game of soccer. Shootouts used to always end in a dog pile, a masculine excuse for genuine affection. 

“Fine,” said Leo. He finally pushed himself off the stall wall, though his hands stayed in his pockets. “We’re done then. Let’s go give an acceptance speech, shall we boys?” He let the bathroom door slam behind him. Jack caught a glimpse of his eyes again in the mirror. They were red, now. 

Only when he made it back into the theater did he realize that Leo hadn’t actually taken a single hit. 

The band was the second job Jack ever quit. 

Early in 2011, As fame flooded into his life, he forgot about the print shop. It wasn’t that the people stopped mattering to him. He still saw books with open spines and shuddered for Gerry’s sake. He still saw old women with worn hands—elegant because of their callouses, not in spite of— and pictured Gladys bent over a long wooden table. And while they’d probably assumed Jack wouldn’t be coming back to the shop as the fame flooded into his small town as well, he’d never actually quit. Leo still wore his embroidered apron to make pasta in hotel kitchens, and Jack knew his favorite books were still stashed away in the break room for reading on slow days, or sometimes just running his hands over the covers. 

When his mom told him she’d run into Gladys at the supermarket one morning, Jack’s heart sunk. 

“What did she say?” 

He’d been on the way to hit hotel breakfast, but stopped instead to huddle into an armchair in the lobby. He put his hood up and took out a pair of sunglasses, though he and his mom used to make fun of people who wore sunglasses inside. 

“She said your ass better have a good excuse for missing three months of work.”

“Did she word it like that?” 

“Something like that.”

“Did you tell her?” 

“Did I tell her you’re in a world famous boy band now? That you’ve eclipsed this quaint little town of ours? And break her heart? No, I most certainly didn’t.” 

“Mom.”

“JJ, you need to call her.” 

“Mom, please,” said Jack, but his mom was already reading out a number, and Jack had no choice but to reach for the hotel stationery on the table beside him and scrawl out the number with the absurdly fancy fountain pen he found lying beside it. 

The afternoon was the busiest time at the shop, but Jack called anyway. He needed to get it over with. He was grateful when Gerry picked up after the fourth ring. He didn’t want to break it to Gladys or Joan. Despite their head whacks and constant scoldings, they liked him too much. Gerry was a friendly guy, but it was different with Gladys and Joan. Jack could tell from little things—the way Joan licked her thumb to wipe ink from his face and Gladys left homemade cookies out in the break room, which neither she nor Gerry touched. 

“This is Gerry. You’ve reached the print shop” There was only one shop like it in town. They didn’t need a name. 

“Hey, Gerry. It’s me, Jack.”

“Jack?” Gerry sounded tired, his words coming out in half-hearted puffs. 

“Yes, Jack Taylor.” 

“Jack Taylor!” Gerry cried. It was a relief to hear the joy in his voice again, the lightness. “We haven’t seen you in months, my boy, but you’ve always got a place in my shop, and you called at the perfect time. We just got in a massive order and-”

“Gerry,” Jack began. “I gotta tell you something.”

Gerry’s voice fell flat. “You’re quitting.” 

“What? Well-” Jack cleared his throat. “Yeah, yeah, I guess I am, but it’s not-”

“We’ll miss you, Jack Taylor.” 

He would’ve rather been cursed out, but Gerry was too kind and too busy for a fight. 

“I’ll miss you, too. Tell Joan and Gladys I say hi and thank you. Thank you to all of you. I loved working at the shop.”

There was a crash on the other end of the line. Jack thought he heard Joan say a four-letter word. 

“Jack Taylor, I’ve got to go, my boy. Thank you for calling.”

“Thanks, Gerr-” Jack began, but the line had already gone dead. Gerry was probably already helping Gladys stack up papers that she had strewn across the tile floor. The papers would probably be wrinkled or dusted now, which meant Joan would insist they throw out the box, which would set them back on their orders, which at three in the afternoon would be piling up and up and up, and Jack wasn’t there. He was in an oversized armchair in a hotel lobby, wearing skinny jeans and drinking herbal tea that tasted like dirt water but was somehow supposed to make his voice sound better, and he was in a city far from his home. 

Jack quit two jobs, and both times felt like carrying out assaults on people he cared about. 

They didn’t win the award. It went to some band full of guys the same age as they were who only seemed younger because they hadn’t been around for as long. They played instruments, too, which stung. Sure, Jack could muddle through a few chords on the piano, but the only thing he had to offer on stage was his voice. 

When they piled into the black SUV, retreating to their own corners, it was clear Ronan and Kyle didn’t want to go to the after party. All four of them had homes in LA—homes which called to them now as havens of solitude and release. The idea of sitting on someone else’s vintage leather couch and taking shots with anemic strangers was nauseating to Jack, and he could tell he wasn’t the only one. Ronan loosened his tie and slumped against the window with his eyes closed. 

“I’m just resting for a second,” he said, but he was snoring before they were out of the parking garage. 

Kyle answered a call from his mom, all the while painfully aware that the other three could hear every word exchanged on both sides of the line. 

_ You won the award? _

“No, mom, I said we  _ didn’t  _ win the award.”

_I’m so proud of you_ _and the boys. Tell them I say hi_. 

“We didn’t- Mom, are you in the living room? You know there’s bad signal in the living room, can you go on the porch?” 

_ Goodnight, honey, and congratulations.  _

“Wait, we didn’t-” The line cut out with two sharp beeps. 

Jack opened his mouth to say something comforting, though he wasn’t sure exactly what it would be. He reached for Kyle’s shoulder, but Leo stuck his head in the path. 

“Who’s ready to get absolutely plastered?” 

Kyle and Ronan eyed one another, but neither moved their head. Leo slung his arms around them. Jack wondered if he didn’t have a flask tucked away in his suit pocket. His breath smelled like it. Only when the silence bordered on awkward did Ronan give in. 

“I am,” he squeaked out. 

“Glorious,” said Leo, and he pulled Ronan into a headlock. Kyle let out a nervous laugh, while Leo, though they were only a block away from the mansion where he lived with Anna, gave a new address to the driver. 

Twenty minutes later, they pulled up to a house in Beverly Hills on a street lined with palm trees and cars worth six-figures a piece. There was a mosaic fountain in the front drive and a long velvet rope that Jack wished would stop him from getting into the party, but he knew there was no such thing as velvet ropes for him anymore. 

Leo stuck his head out the window. “They’re playing our first single!” he said. “It’s meant to be, boys. Let’s go out with a bang.” Sure enough, the bouncer gave him a nod as he hopped the rope. Part of Jack wished he would trip, but he didn’t. Instead, Leo dove into the crowd until it swallowed him in pounding noise and flashing violet light, leaving the three of them to fend for themselves. Jack turned back, but the SUV had already disappeared. He watched its tail lights until they dropped over the hillside. 

It said something about Ronan that he fell asleep on a leather couch in the middle of a raging Beverly Hills house party and not a soul touched him except to drape a fur blanket over his back. Apparently, before plummeting into REM sleep, he had made friends with the hostess. Jack ran into the woman, whose music he pretended to have listened to, in front of the chocolate fountain. She promised to watch over him, feed him a good breakfast, and send him home safe the next morning, which was more than good enough for Jack. 

He found Kyle sitting on the curb outside, his back against a palm tree. Jack looked down at the glass in his hand. It was half full with something clear that jingled with ice. 

“Sierra Mist,” Kyle said, raising the glass toward a streetlight. Jack didn’t have a glass to raise, so he smiled instead. “There’s better service out here. I thought I’d try to catch my mom again, but I think she went to bed.” 

“She’ll figure out that we didn’t win eventually.”

“Or I’ll just disconnect her TV and tell her you stole the trophy to keep in your bathroom.” 

Jack nodded. “Works for me.” 

Kyle took a long swig of Sierra Mist. “This is it for me.” 

“What do you mean?

“This band. This is my peak. You and Spencer, you’ve got something special, but the rest of us? We’ll never be this high again. I’m twenty-one years old, and I’m on the other side of the roller coaster.”

“This is the fun part. Now you’re riding down the hill.” He raised his arms and let out a little yell. Kyle’s face didn’t move. “Look, you don’t know that. Like you said, you’re twenty-one. You’re free. You can do whatever you want now. And it’s not like we’re dying. We’ll all still be there for each other.” He jabbed Kyle lightly on the shoulder. He smiled, but Jack could tell it was only for his sake. He had that effect on people. It was a little like the velvet rope. 

“Good,” Kyle mumbled. “I still want to see your hideous face from time to time.”

“You will,” said Jack, wanting to say something more, something better. 

Leo’s head appeared between them. It was becoming something of a pattern. 

“I think I’m gonna drive home in my car,” he said. His speech was slurred and he leaned on both their shoulders to heave himself back up again. “Hey, valet,” he shouted to no one as he yanked at the handle of a Maserati. “This one’s mine.” 

Jack turned to roll his eyes at Kyle, but he was already gone. Jack could make out the top of his platinum blonde hair at the back of the buffet line. He stood up and brushed the dirt from the back of his tuxedo pants. 

“Hey, Leo.” He was squatting like an ape on the hood of the car. Jack tried not to make any sudden movement. “Hey, hey, hey. Why don’t we get down from the car that costs as much as my mom’s house, huh?” He helped Leo stumbled off the car. As soon as his feet hit the pavement, Leo slumped into Jack’s arms. 

“I’m gonna take a nap here, alright?”

“No, no, no.” It seemed Jack could only muddle out words in threes in his state of panic. “We’re gonna get you home. Let me just call the driver.” Jack tried to guide Leo’s limp body to the ground so he could call their driver, but Leo wrapped his arms around Jack’s neck and wouldn’t let go.

“You’re so soft,” he whispered into Jack’s chest. “Like a pillow.” 

“Alright, alright. Just hold on for ten minutes.” Leo tightened his grip on Jack. “That’s not what I meant.” Though he hadn’t fallen asleep, Leo let out long, exaggerated snores that echoed against the mosaic foundation across the front entrance. Clumps of people in shiny clothes with shiny faces glanced over from the front lawn. They were sipping champagne. A few of them were clutching awards. Jack nodded and waved. No one returned the gesture. 

When the car pulled up, Jack couldn’t get Leo to walk toward it. 

“Fuck it,” he finally said under his breath. He swung Leo’s legs into the air and caught them, carrying him bridal style into the car. He heard a few whoops and cheers from the crowd behind him. It was easier than Jack had remembered. He did, though, recall the way Leo nestled into his neck and exhaled deeply so the vibrating radiated through Jack’s chest. 

As quickly as he could, he dumped Leo in the back seat and got in the front, but the heat still radiated there as he buckled himself into the front seat, and he hated Leo for it. 

Anna’s name stared back at Jack beside an empty gray icon with her initials in the center. He didn’t remember ever having put her number in his phone, but there it was. Maybe Leo had done it for him, or maybe they’d coordinated a surprise birthday party for Leo one year, and he’d repressed the memory. He felt nervous, tapping her name now. A sense of heavy dread blanketed him as the first ring blared out, then the second, then she answered, sounding groggy. 

“Jack?”

“I’m sorry to call this late. It’s Leo, he’s- we’re outside your place. I would’ve knocked, but there’s a gate, and I couldn’t find an intercom or anything. There’s just this keypad thing.” 

She yawned. “Leo knows the code.”

“Leo’s…” He paused and looked up at the night sky. It was clear for LA. The Big Dipper was out. “Incapacitated at the moment.” 

“Oh.” Somehow, Jack could hear her blushing. He wanted to comfort her, but didn’t know what to say. His arm was going numb from holding up Leo, who mumbled something about marinara sauce. 

“Could you just come outside?” Jack asked. “I’m really sorry.” 

“No, that’s fine. I’ll be out in a second.” A light flickered on in an upstairs window. Anna was down in a few minutes in a pale pink nightgown and silk slippers to match. Did people really wear nightgowns and silk slippers? Jack looked down at the moss and dirt squeezed between the stones of the driveway and found himself worried their silk soles would get soiled or torn. But then that thought was replaced by another as she got closer to the gate. Jack realized he had never seen her with no makeup on before. Her beauty was even more vivid—her lips a light pink instead of their usually glossy red, her eyelashes fair like her hair, and a neighborhood of freckles along the bridge of her nose. Leo wakes up to this face evermore, Jack thought to himself as she pressed her face between the bars. 

“I should’ve come,” she said. Jack knew he needed to call Peter in the morning and tell him the band was done, and the weight of that responsibility had been restricting the breath in his chest for the past several hours. He didn’t want to tell Anna, too, but he needed to explain. She looked disappointed, and though he wasn’t sure whether the feeling was directly at herself or Leo, Jack wanted to relieve it. 

“He would’ve been the same with or without you there. We’re calling it. We decided during the ceremony.” Jack laughed. “In the fucking men’s room.” 

“Calling it?” Anna turned away from the keypad. The gate stayed closed. Leo nearly fell over, but Jack caught him just in time and straightened him to his feet. “You guys are quitting the band?” 

Jack nodded. 

“Holy shit.” 

“It was time. We all sensed it coming.” 

Finally, Anna turned back to the keypad and punched in the numbers. The gate swung open with a robotic hum. 

“Inevitable things can still be shocking,” she said. 

Jack nodded. She was right, but he felt too tired to be shocked. Leo was burrowing his head in Jack’s chest again, and Jack couldn’t tell if he was trying to get comfortable or wiping his nose. Anna reached for his flailing arm. 

“Remember when we made pasta?” he was saying. 

“Well,  _ we  _ is a strong word, but  _ I  _ made linguine last week. You put the garlic bread in the oven, though.” Anna stroked his hair as he transferred his head from Jack’s chest to hers. 

“Jack,” he corrected. “Jack and I made pasta.” Anna’s face hardened with realization before Leo said the words. It hurt Jack that Leo had shared that story with her, but it was a relief too, that she wouldn’t have to find out this way. “He kissed me,” said Leo, more like a fond memory than an accusation. 

“Goodnight,” Jack said, to neither one of them in particular. He turned away, but Anna reached for his swinging hand. She supported Leo’s weight with the other. 

“Thank you,” she said. 

Jack’s voice came out harsher than he’d intended. “I wasn’t just going to leave him passed out at a stranger’s house.” He looked down at Anna’s pink nightgown and felt impure and oversized inside his own skin. Slipping his hand out of Anna’s grasp, he straightened his tuxedo jacket. She kept her hand held out, suspended between them. 

“Thank you for caring for him, Jack,” she said firmly. “All these years. You’re the best friend he’s ever had. That’s never going to change.” 

Jack exhaled toward those moss-crowded cracks at their feet. 

“Well, it’s your turn to take care of him,” he said. He could only whisper. Nothing more would come out. “You’ll do that right?” 

Anna nodded, and, watching her guide Leo into the house as the iron gate swung closed behind them, Jack believed her. 


	16. Fall 2015

Only when Jack saw Spencer weaving between sculptures and portraits beneath the gallery lights did he realize how unhappy his friend had been before. Only by comparison did the amorphous shadow of the past reveal its dark edges. On stage, Spencer’s talent was a burden. He squeezed his eyes shut for high notes and collapsed his shoulders while he crooned harmonies. Here, in an underground art gallery, he drank in canvases with every feature of his face lit up. He told stories to strangers like he was conducting an orchestra—all waving arms and upturned chin. Jack spent the first half hour of his visit not studying artwork, but studying this new Spencer, resurrected from a half-death, he somehow hadn’t seen before. He was wearing tiny hoop earrings and a gold chain to match. In a button-down shirt with a pattern that flashed and zigzagged, he looked nothing like the old Spencer and, Jack realized, every bit like himself. 

Spencer eventually spotted Jack over the heads of a captivated crowd. He had to wade through them like water to travel ten feet. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere, man.” They hugged, but in the tentative way only men do—one hand clasped at the chest, one hand slung over the other’s shoulders. Jack held on a little longer than necessary to make a point. 

“I missed you, Spence,” he said when he finally pulled away. 

“I’m glad you came.” 

“Of course I came.” 

“Well,” Spencer stepped back and spread his arms, presenting the room before him. “What do you think?

“I mean, it’s no back alley brick wall, but it’s okay.” Spencer laughed, which soothed Jack. It was a familiar sound, reminding him that Spencer’s time in the band hadn't been all shadow. 

Then Spencer cocked his head toward the opposite side of the room. “Come here. I want to show you something.” They squeezed through the crowd which had been growing as the night went on. If anyone recognized Jack, they didn’t show it. Instead, it was Spencer who drew eyes and waves and blushes from each body they brushed past. 

“Dude, you’re like a god.” 

Spencer smirked. “You may be God of the music industry, my friend, but I’m God of the underground art world.”

“But your voice, Spencer-”

“Is a gift, and I’m grateful for it, but just because I’m good at something, doesn’t mean I have to love it.” 

“You seem really happy,” said Jack. 

“I am.”

They came to a stop in front of a canvas that spanned an entire wall. Across the background, Spencer had painted a grid of bricks splashed with ivy and dripping concrete. At the sides were the same dark blue bars that had caged Jack’s face on a wall in Amsterdam. Here, though, the bars were bent back, as though someone had pried them open from the center. Out of the heart of the cage emerged five figures. Four of them were painted a dusty silver, but the one in the center was black. All five heads were haloed in gold just the same. Hanging over them was a kindergarten heart bleeding down in narrow rivers between them and disappearing off bottom of the canvas. Jack looked down at the card hanging on the wall beside the painting—

_ Red-Light Heroes. _

“It’s kinda cheesy, but only if you know me. If you don’t, it’s deep as fuck.” 

“It’s incredible.” 

For the first time that evening, Spencer looked down at his feet. 

“I’m working on it,” he said with arms folded. “It’s my first attempt at this kind of thing. I don’t usually work on canvas and I prefer spray paint to oil.”

“It’s incredible,” Jack repeated, and this time Spencer gave the smallest of nods. 

“Jack’s right,” said a voice behind them. “It’s incredible, Spencer, really. I had no idea you could do this kind of thing.” 

Jack spun around, while Spencer turned slowly, expectantly. 

What startled Jack most was that Leo had grown a beard. It felt like a betrayal, somehow. In the band, they weren’t allowed to have facial hair. Their primary audience, after all, had been adolescent girls. Leo’s beard, full and well-groomed, felt like a rejection of their fans and of the years they’d spent singing together. But then Jack thought of Spencer’s new posture and swinging arms, and he softened to the beard as a symbol of freedom and not a rebuke. It helped that Leo wore the same blue sweater he’d worn to a morning show interview the year before, its wool the same light shade as his eyes. His hair was swept back out of his face, but not defying gravity in the way Tess usually styled it. He looked handsome, yes, but unmistakably normal. 

There was something else strange about seeing Leo there. Only when a thin blonde woman strode past the painting did Jack realize what it was: the absence of Anna. They’d broken up a few weeks after the band had. Leo hadn’t told Jack. Instead, he’s read it on his Twitter feed. He had called Leo, but then hung up after one ring. Then, he typed out a text to Anna, but then erased it, along with her number. Jack had expected Leo to look less adult without Anna to tuck in his shirts and smooth down his hair when it shot up at awkward angles, but he’d been wrong. Leo had always been more grown up than the rest of them. Anna had nothing to do with it. 

“Thanks for coming,” Spencer told him. He reached for his hand, but Leo pulled him into a full bear hug that made Jack wish he’d been so bold. 

“Yeah, well, I’ve got a lot more free time these days,” he said as they pulled away. Jack took a step toward the canvas, as though to look closer, but Leo caught him by the arm. 

“It’s good to see you.”

“You too.” 

Leo shifted from his toes to his heels and turned to face Spencer. “Kyle and Ronan wanted to come, but apparently trying to launch a solo career is really time consuming.” 

“But it’s not consuming all your time?”

“We all know I can’t sing for shit.” Leo laughed, but Jack’s face hardened. 

“That’s not true,” he said, louder than he’d intended. A couple who had strolled over to the painting, stepped away whispering to one another. Jack turned to Spencer, who didn’t say anything. Instead, he put one hand on Jack’s shoulder and the other on Leo’s. 

“I’ve gotta go talk to some people, but you guys should check out my sculpture. Or the  hors d'oeuvres . I’m proud of both.” Jack laughed, half at the joke and half out of discovering anew this transformed Spencer with his friendly quips and tiny hoop earrings. He watched Spencer wade back into the crowd, immediately reigniting his effortless symphony. 

Jack turned back slowly, expecting Leo to be gone, dreading his absence, all while resenting himself that dread. But Leo was still there, gazing up at the canvas like a kid in front of a toy store window. Jack remembered Amsterdam, how Leo’s eyes had ignited in front of the irises, how he’d unfurled the skeleton poster like an ancient scroll, how Jack still kept a shred of it in his wallet, how they’d laced their fingers together in front of the self-portrait, the painter’s sad eyes somehow inspiring euphoria in its viewers. Jack wondered if there was something about Van Gogh’s expression and frenetic sea foam background, or if any painting would’ve done the trick. 

“I knew he was the most talented of all us, but I didn’t know it was in this way.” 

“He’s God of the underground art world.”

Leo chuckled. “Apparently.” 

From the side, with his face lit up with feeling and the slanted gallery lights, Leo looked just as he had onstage. He looked older with the beard, yes, but it wasn’t thick enough to cover the gentle curve of his jaw, the delicate swoop of his cheekbones, the dark curl of his eyelashes. For five years, Jack had stood beside this boy—this man—and sung lyrics about love, willing himself not to turn his head a few inches to the side. Except for that one night, he’d won that vicious battle between instinct and fear, though it seemed to tear up the space between his aching bones and burning skin. Now, though, there was no music and there was no sea of fans and it was just the two of them in front of that massive canvas, so Jack let himself look. 

“I could stare at this for hours,” said Leo. 

“Me too.”

By November, it was chilly outside in New York, but Leo wanted ice cream, and Jack couldn’t bring himself to say no. Plus, he knew a place not far from the gallery. Leo paid for both their cones when Jack wasn’t looking, but he slipped a few bills in the pocket of his old corduroy jacket—the same one he’s worn to carve pumpkins—as they wandered down the street. Leo ordered chocolate and spilled a glob on his sweater. Jack, enjoying his strawberry cone, decided not to say anything. He looked too pleased with himself, and, though he couldn’t think of what, Jack felt like he owed Leo something. For the moment, he paid back that debt with an omission of truth. Before they’d left the ice cream shop, he sensed the reverse coming. 

“I’m happy that Spencer’s happy,” Leo said. He broke a comfortable silence that had settled between them, but Jack didn’t mind. 

He smiled. “I want all of us to have that.”

“You’ll have it.”

Jack snorted. “How do you know?”

“I can just tell,” Leo said with his mouth full. There was chocolate in his beard. Jack wanted to reach out and wipe it away. The urge to touch him didn’t well up like it used to, but it was there, gently tapping beneath the skin of Jack’s palms, in the slight quickening of his pulse. It was easy to quiet, and easier to ignore. 

They walked to the river because that was what people did. It was just after ten at night on a Tuesday, but the railing was still crowded with bodies—lone figures flicking cigarette embers into the water, joggers pounding their sneakers against the sidewalk, couples huddled together against the cold. Leo walked up to a tower viewer and shoved a few quarters inside. 

“Leo, it’s dark outside. You’re not gonna see anything.” Jack glanced around, but no one was watching. Each cluster of humanity was gazing at some spot on the horizon like it was Gatsby’s green light. 

Leo put his face up to the binoculars and squinted. Jack watched the ice cream drip down his knuckles like veins. “You slipped a twenty in my pocket when that ice cream only cost two bucks. I’m a rich man now. I’ve got money to burn.” 

“What do you see?”

“Darkness.”

“I figured.”

Without moving his face, Leo held up a finger behind him. “ _ Magnified  _ darkness.” When Jack laughed, Leo pulled away and grabbed Jack’s cone. “You look,” he said, and put a fist on either side of Jack’s head, guiding him toward the lenses and getting ice cream in his curls in the process. He peered through. The metal against his face helped cool the heat that had rushed there. 

“What do you see?” Leo asked quietly.

Jack pulled his face away and answered, “You.” 

When Leo didn’t say anything, Jack stared down at their feet, inches apart on the pavement. There was a constellation of ice cream drippings on Leo’s sneakers. 

“Your shoes,” said Jack. Leo didn’t look. 

“I can’t,” he said. 

“I didn’t ask you anything.” 

Leo shook his head and carried the cones to a nearby trash can. It was a foolishly practical thing to do. Jack had the vague thought of wasting something. His mind felt hazy. He couldn’t remember the cold of the binoculars or the cold of the ice cream anymore, only the heat of Leo’s words, only the constellations on his sneakers. 

“I know, but I can’t,” he said. 

Jack blinked until his vision steadied. “Why?” 

Leo lifted his arms and put them down again, like he didn’t know what to do with his hands without ice cream cones to clutch. He took a step towards Jack with a fierce look in his eyes that triggered a memory Jack couldn’t put his finger on. “It’s not who I am,” he said. 

“What does that matter?” 

“It matters to me.” 

The binoculars clicked shut. 

Leo was crying. Had Jack ever seen Leo cry before? In a flash, the urge to touch him was as it had been—excruciating. But Jack didn’t move. He remembered that fierce look—Leo was about to kiss him on the tour bus, about to trade the in-between for clumsy singularity. But the look was gone now, replaced by something like grief. 

“I didn’t ask you anything,” Jack said again, more to himself than to Leo. “I just ran into you at the gallery and bought you ice cream and looked at nothing through your cold binoculars. You keep making me feel like I’ve done something to you, like I’ve forced something on you, but I haven’t, Leo. For five years, I’ve been there for you. I let you borrow my clothes. I washed your dishes. I rubbed your back. God, I made love to you, Leo, in so many ways. And then I watch you fake-date Anna and then real-date Anna, and I was there for you the whole time, even when you moved out. Even when you decided to ignore me. I’ve always been there for you. I haven’t done anything wrong, so stop looking at me like that. Stop making me feel like a monster for having loved you.” 

Leo opened his mouth and closed it again, then he managed to say, “You never—”

And he was right, Jack realized. Yes, he had said it in so many other ways—with his hands and his lips and his lyrics, but never that way. To say it out loud, Jack had thought back then, in the lush garden thickness of it all, was to expose the thing to the elements, to the winds and rains and floods of fate. So he’d guarded it for years until it languished anyway. All he had to show for it now was  _ having loved you _ , words caked with rust and grime. 

“I want to kiss you,” said Jack, words he hadn’t meant to say out loud, but Leo nodded, like he’d been expecting them. 

It was slow, when so much of their affection had been fast. Out of fear or necessity, they had stolen so many moments from one another and from the world, but this one was free for the taking. The wind howled enough to unsay their words, and they huddled against each other in the dark pause between two streetlights, connected at the lips, at the fingertips, at the toes, at the waist. Jack was glowing. Surely, someone would notice them there, burning brilliant and golden against the dark. 

Jack tore himself away first because he knew he couldn’t bear to feel Leo sever the current. 

“I’m sorry,” he said, letting himself erase the truths he’d spilled with his lips, sweeping them from the concrete into the river below and hating himself for it. 

“I always felt it too,” said Leo. They were still close enough to exchange whispers. The edges of Leo’s beard scraped rough against Jack’s chin. The feeling rendered the familiar foreign, a sharp reminder of all the things they no longer were to each other. “It wasn’t just you.” 

Jack wasn’t surprised that Leo couldn’t echo the words. The admission still meant something. Leo took a step back. 

“We could’ve been together,” Jack said quietly, not caring that Leo might not hear him over the wind, which died down before he had the courage to add,  _ We still could. _

Leo smoothed his beard with the palm of his hand. It was a new tick—one of the only gestures Leo could make that Jack wasn’t familiar with. 

“We _ were  _ together,” said Leo. 

Jack shook his head and turned to lean his back against the railing. He couldn’t look at the water anymore. He worried he might fall. “We loved each other. That’s not the same thing.”

Jack knew what Leo would say next because he’d imagined the conversation over and over again in his head for years, and it always ended the same way. 

“I can’t,” he said softly, though the wind had stilled entirely so that Jack caught every syllable. 

Jack pulled up his collar and pushed off the railing. The wind danced in Leo’s hair so that naturally it stood up how it used to by means of hairspray and relentless heat. Since the band, Jack had grown his hair long, so it only swayed against his shoulders. Though Leo had his beard, it calmed Jack to think of his long hair denying the image of what he had once been, or rather hadn’t been. 

Leo took a step forward, but Jack had already taken one back. 

“I’ll see you,” he said, because to say goodbye to Leo would be impossible. To say goodbye would imply the end of something, and to deny themselves that shimmering illusion of possibility would surely break them both. 


	17. Spring 2020

When Jack returned to his apartment in New York for the first time in two years, he found leftovers in the fridge. It felt good somehow to put on rubber gloves and clear out what had once been lo mein. It was a kind of cleansing. He realized quickly, though, that it wasn’t the smell that bothered him. It was that he had promised himself he would come back sooner, but he hadn’t. He had stayed away from his apartment and stayed away from the city. He had booked hotels and stayed with friends, all to avoid staring out the window at his fire escape and lingering in front of the stove when no else was around to distract him. 

The place was a penthouse on the other side of Manhattan from his first ever grownup apartment, and he’d furnished it carefully with hammocks and elaborate house plants. It was a new space, a culmination of full growth, but it still bore the sounds and smells of the city. Jack was only back now to prove to himself that he could stay the night alone in a New York apartment, especially one that he paid for and loved as long as it was daytime. At night, he watched TV until he could barely keep his eyes open and crawled into bed. 

He was in New York to record his next album. The studio in LA was stale, Luna had decided, and Jack willed himself to agree. It felt like a challenge, and he had the nagging sense that there was something like lo mein rotting in his refrigerator. So he had cleaned it out. All he had to do now was fall asleep in a city surging with currents of the past, of a name he couldn’t bear to think, much less say aloud. When he did fall asleep, it was only for short fits filled with vivid dreams. At three in the morning, he gave up and brought his comforter to the fire escape. He wrapped it around himself, forming a train at his feet that dangled off the steps. He thought of his pale blue gown hanging over the Cliffs of Moher. In a week, he would be in Ireland posing in a dress for the world to see, but the thought of those jagged heights and that dress evoked in him nothing like the fear that now stirred between his collarbones. 

It was dumb. He was here to make an album, an album that would earn him millions in seconds. He was twenty-six. He hadn’t shared an apartment in New York since he was twenty. Just to try it out, just to prove something to himself, Jack leaned over the railing and called out a name. Both syllables echoed back to him in their own time, merging together into a single mass of sound. 

No. It didn’t feel right to distort the name like that, so he whispered it to himself instead. The air was cold enough to turn breath to cloud. When Jack unpeeled the comforter from around his face and spoke the word, it was as though the sound itself was a mist. He expected a kind of release, but the sound made sight just hung there on the fire escape. Jack didn’t dare exhale, for fear of erasing it—him—entirely. 

When he was on the tour bus or in a hotel room or onstage during a guitar solo, Jack missed being in a band. When he was in the studio, he felt with his whole being that he was meant to make his own music. In most senses, his solo songs were collaborations—Olivia texted him lyrics and his instrumentalists helped with key changes and the sound guy made it all come to life—but the meat of the writing, the digging he did at two in the morning on the fire escape—that was making his own music, and it was painful ecstasy, an excruciating burning that glowed, too. It was a drug. 

First, Jack discovered metaphors. He used them to deconstruct the people and feelings that scared him most, they were made up of the same colors, but illegible to the rest of the world.

_ I’m at a bus stop with no benches _

_ And the wait’s too long for my legs to hold out  _

_ This ache upends me and suspends me _

_ I know there’s a bus because it’s what I wrote this song about  _

Eventually, though, metaphors couldn’t hold what he wanted—no, needed—to say. Without a container, Jack exposed himself to the elements, but he didn’t have a choice. After years of practice, he couldn’t remember how to not tell the truth anymore. 

_ We went outside to watch the moon, but it was new, _

_ It was new and it was you when I woke up  _

_ To watch the dew, watch the dew _

_ You waved to strangers, dear, and I was new  _

With one headphone clutched to his ear, Jack sang the lyrics now. Inevitably, painfully, sweetly, he was back at the cabin, back on the dock, back in his bed using his sweatshirt as a pillow until Leo woke him up wearing a winter hat with long braids. It was always this way. The studio was a place for his body to merely exist while his mind soared elsewhere. 

His voice cracked, which sometimes happened. He should’ve kept going. He shouldn’t have opened his eyes, but he did. The studio door shouldn’t have been open, but it was, and Jack’s eyes went to the hallway outside. 

_ Shit _ . 

Jack pulled his headphones down to rest against his neck. It was pointless. He couldn’t hear through the studio glass. He only saw heads turning, lips moving, and a tall figure flash across the hallway. He shook his head and closed his eyes, performing the focus of a musical genius in case someone was watching. 

_ Shit,  _ he thought again, staring down at his boots on the dusty old studio rug.  _ I shouldn’t have said the name.  _

Sound flooded the booth, but he couldn’t bear to look up. “Jack Taylor,” said a voice. It wasn’t the one he’d expected. Still, it sent a chill up and down his spine. 

“Peter.” 

He had already left the soundboard and flung open the door. He held his arms out wide, just as he had on the porch of his cabin ten years ago, except now Jack was alone, and he knew Peter too well to be awed by his broad wingspan. He looked like he’d aged a few decades rather than a few years, but he wore the same pressed white shirt and dark wash jeans, though neither fit quite as well. He’d dyed his hair to keep it black, but white stubble still crept into his beard and his neck sagged where it used to tense up when he was angry. Now his muscular veins had been erased by the wear of the years. Only his teeth looked untouched—uniformly straight and dazzlingly white. 

“I heard your voice from down the hall and couldn’t help myself,” said Peter. “Luna told me you usually record in LA?”

Jack shrugged, looked at the rug again, then back up at Peter because it felt like the polite thing to do. He smiled and nodded as Peter went on. 

“Well, New York is lucky to have you. Luna and I have settled down up here, actually, —as settled as two people like us can be. She’s in London at the moment doing some recruiting, but you probably know that. She’s your boss now, I guess.” Just saying Luna’s name softened something in Peter. It was harder to hate him with her image floating between them. “I’m so proud of that woman.”

Jack lowered his voice and added, “Luna is a gift to the world.” 

He decided not to remind Peter that she was in London so she could meet up with Jack in Ireland the next week. Peter didn’t always keep track of his wife’s schedule, and Jack had a feeling that Luna liked it that way. The photoshoot, like the label, didn’t belong to Peter. The two of them had been married for two decades, and it was true—Jack was signed to Luna’s label, which in some ways made her his boss, but Jack still felt like a protective father. Peter just laughed and put a hand on Jack’s shoulder. 

“It’s great to run into you, kid.” Peter laughed at his own joke before he said it. “Hey, Luna told me what you’re planning to do in Ireland, and I thought, man, only Jack Taylor could get pussy in a fucking dress. You’re a god, Jack. A god. You’ve got to tell me how you-” 

Jack shrunk backwards and tugged at the headphones around his neck. He jutted his thumb behind him at nothing. “I actually have to-” 

“Oh, absolutely.” Peter clapped his hands together and took a step toward the door. “Absolutely. But when you’re finished with your session you should stop by down the hall. I’m working with someone you might know.” He winked and turned away. 

Jack pulled on his headphones to block out the roaring silence Peter had left in his wake. 

Jack heard Leo before he saw him. He knew from pictures that Leo had changed—he’d kept the beard and started sweeping his hair down over his forehead, he’d gotten more tattoos and started wearing a chain around his neck. As far as Jack could tell, he still dressed the same, in colored shirts under sweaters and light wash jeans, only he wore cooler sneakers now and rolled his sleeves up to show off his tattoos. Despite all this, without seeing Leo, he sounded exactly the same. Sure, the song’s lyrics were shitty and the beat was overpowering, but Leo’s voice cut through it all and emerged in all its sacred purity. Leo’s voice was how it had always been—clear as a bell but tinged with a rough sadness. 

He stopped singing in the middle of a track when he spotted Jack leaning against the doorframe behind the soundboard. 

Peter pressed the com button and leaned down. “What happened?” he sounded tired. When Leo didn’t reply, Peter turned around. 

“Jack!” He spread his arms wide again. “I’m so glad you stopped by. Didn’t I tell you there was someone here you might know?” Jack nodded slowly. He made himself look at Peter, but Leo’s figure loomed over his shoulder—a narrow blue speck rocking nervously side to side.    
“We’ve got a lot more to get through, but I’ll let you two catch up for a few.” He signaled for the sound guy to leave and pressed the com again. “Great go around, Leo. Really, that was phenomenal. Incredible. I’m gonna run out for a coffee, but you two stay and chat, reminisce, be merry.” Peter took his finger off the button and turned. 

“And Jack.” He slipped a business card out of his back pocket. “I know you’ve got a good thing going with Luna.” He pressed his palm into Jack’s shoulder, and slid the card into his hand. “But you let me know if you ever want to sign with your old man again. I won’t tell.” While he swaggered out of the room, Peter whistled to himself. Jack only caught a few notes, but he recognized the tune as the band’s first hit single. 

“He’s-” Leo paused. 

“I know.” 

They both leaned against their respective doorways, each with hands dug into their pockets and eyes cast down. 

“You sound great,” said Jack. 

“The song’s shit.”

“You sound great,” Jack said again. 

At first Leo just nodded, but then he laughed. They both laughed, so neither had to look at the carpet anymore. With that air full between them, Jack could study the vines that wove up and down Leo’s forearms. Leo could take in Jack’s fingernails, which were painted alternating shades of pink and lime green. Then, with more courage, Jack could study the dip of Leo’s cheekbones, visible even through the soft expanse of the beard that now grew there, and Leo could lift his chin slightly to peer into Jack’s eyes, which sure enough were framed by the same thick, curling lashes that they always had been, despite how he wore nail polish now and had grown his hair long so the curls pooled at his shoulders rather than haloing around his head. 

Leo was about to step out of the doorway, Jack could feel it. He had stopped laughing, but let the smile linger on his lips so that his cheeks grew round and pink, his chin stretched wide, and his eyes narrowed but still shined their impossible pale blue across the distance between the two of them. And, in fact, Jack was right. Leo kept his hands in his pockets, but he stood upright and crossed the carpet and stood in front of Jack with his gaze steady and his eyes so blue it hurt. And what had all the years been for? What had been the point of all the painstaking forgetting, if all it took were a few seconds alone with Leo to give new life to what he’d first felt in a gravel driveway in upstate New York at the age of sixteen? To honor that effort, Jack didn’t move from his doorframe. For once, he let Leo come to him, though he felt his every inhale as a beckoning, as a magnetic force shooting out and pulling in with each breath. He didn’t want to forget anymore. It drained him. This—this radiant remembering—filled him. 

Leo stood a foot from him now. He wasn’t smiling anymore, but the color hadn’t left his cheeks, and his hands hung at his sides instead of in his pockets. His shoulders were tense, but his fingers danced with nervous energy. Jack stared down at the veins and tendons there, though he knew them all by heart. It was a comfort that they, like Leo’s voice, were just the same. Jack let none of this flood his face. He only held Leo’s gaze with steady ease, waiting for the familiar to wash over him again. 

“Anna and I are engaged.” 

It all happened quickly—the pang of surprise, the flash of anger, the press of grief, and then the banishment of it all. 

He smiled, and though it ached in every blood vessel, he reached out to place a hand on Leo’s shoulder. It felt like the right gesture to offer, something Peter had done a few moments earlier, something a friend would do. 

“That’s great, Leo. I’m really happy for you.” He tried to mean it, until he actually did. In a way, the forced happiness was a relief, surely more sustainable than the hope that had been nestled in a cobweb corner of Jack’s brain for too long. 

Leo’s shoulders dropped down a few inches, and his fingers stopped their nervous twitching. Jack felt the exhale before he heard it. He let his lungs fall into the same calming rhythm. He urged them to release all the anxious air they’d been storing. 

Leo smiled. “Thanks,” he said softly. “It’s been great to watch you be- you. It’s right that you’ve made it the biggest of all of us. You deserve it.”

Jack let his words run over Leo’s. “You deserve everything,” he said. Leo looked to the ground again, but Jack pressed on. “I just want you to be so happy.” It felt too serious, so he added, “I want you to be, like, Ronan-eating-Spencer’s-mac-and-cheese happy.”

“I don’t think that’s possible for me.” 

Jack laughed, but Leo didn’t. 

“I mean it,” said Jack. He wanted to shake Leo, to scream the memories of who he had once been into this half-person. Leo was there. Jack could hear him in his voice and see him in the untucked shirt poking out beneath his sweater. He was there, but he was fading. Jack furrowed his brow and stopped himself from stamping his foot. For the first time in years, he felt two years younger than Leo, but now his lip was trembling, too, and he couldn’t stop it. 

“I want you to be happy,” said Jack. 

Leo smiled softly. “I know.” 

For the most part, during the years Jack and Leo were together, the other boys pretended not to notice. It was a kindness, really. They turned their heads when Leo grabbed Jack’s hand beneath a press conference table or stood in front of the camera when Jack brushed his lips, softly and barely for a moment, over Leo’s cheek at a red carpet appearance. Spencer, Ronan, and Kyle became unspoken guardians—except on one night, when Leo stood on a table and said it all outright because it was what Jack needed to hear. 

They were in London having tea. Luna said it would make for cute pictures, though none of them ever saw the light of day because Jack wouldn’t stop scowling. Jack had never been the brooding one. It wasn’t like him. One voice crack on national television changed that. 

“No one noticed,” Ronan said the minute they got off stage, but Jack was already halfway to the dressing room. He dug his phone out from between two couch cushions and opened Twitter where, sure enough, people had noticed. #JackCrack was trending. 

It would have been different if he had been alone up there, but he represented something bigger. He didn’t mind letting himself down, but he had let down the band on the biggest morning show in the UK. He called his mom, but she didn’t answer because of the time difference. She didn’t know yet, but she would when she woke up. She probably had the show recorded on her DVR. She would probably invite friends over to watch, and the popcorn would drop from their dark-lipstick mouths when Jack reached that high note, that high note he had sung a thousand times before with perfect soaring precision. 

He couldn’t stop thinking about his mom at tea that afternoon. There were sandwiches with the crusts cut off, which was how his mom made them for his school lunches, though these were stuffed with unfamiliar goop in unsettling colors, so Jack just sipped his tea, which tasted like nothing, and thought of his mother sitting in front of the TV. She had seen it, or, rather, she had heard it. She had texted him congratulations without mentioning the voice crack, which only made Jack feel worse. 

They were in a private room at their hotel. The tea had gone cold, but Jack kept sipping anyway because it was something to do. Ronan was fulfilling a dare from Kyle by shoving as many tiny sandwiches into his mouth as possible, while Luna spoke sternly to the photographer. 

Spencer leaned over to Jack. “I’ve never had tea before. I thought this shit was supposed to taste like hot chocolate or something.” 

Jack laughed with half his face and took another sip. Spencer was right. The tea tasted like shit. He closed his eyes as he swallowed, enjoying the feel of cold bitterness all the way down his throat. He drank like it was something he deserved and exhaled when he finished the last of it. He could hear the faint clink of his cup against his saucer ring out across the room. Ronan had dropped the sandwiches from his mouth in a fist-sized wad. Luna and the photographer stood still and hushed. They all looked at Leo, who was climbing on top of the tea table like it was something he did on a daily basis. He was short enough that his head didn’t hit the chandelier. The light only served to cast a halo around his messy hair. 

Leo put his hands on his hips. “Jack Taylor,” he said. “You are the most talented person I know.” Kyle opened his mouth, but Leo stuck out a finger and continued. “Your voice is raw and real, so of course it cracks sometimes. Strong things have cracks in them. Get over it.” Though he was talking to Jack, Leo turned in a circle throughout his speech, waving his hands as though to rally a crowd. “Your heart is gentle and kind, Jack, which is why you’re beating yourself up over letting us down, but you could never let us down. Why can’t you see how perfect you are?” Leo stopped his spinned and addressed a spot on the wall just above Jack’s head. “You’re talented and authentic. You’re thoughtful and selfless.” He laughed toward the ceiling before finally settling his gaze on Jack. “And, God, you’re so beautiful.” 

Jack stood up and Leo leaned down. So quickly that anyone could have missed it, they kissed. By the time they pulled away, it didn’t matter, because Jack was smiling again. Ronan started a round of applause with Spencer and Kyle quickly joining in. It was a relief, if only for a moment, to let their guards down, to pretend, in that tiny room with its lacy tablecloths and crystal chandelier, that they didn’t need to pretend. Leo held Jack’s hand beneath the table, and though a server poured more black tea in his cup, Jack left it to sit there and reflect the chandelier, bitter and untouched. 

“I want you to be happy,” he had told Leo. 

“I know.” 

_ I want to stand on a table and tell the world that, God, you’re beautiful.  _

The words welled up in Jack, but he nodded instead. He’d done all he could. They weren’t eighteen and twenty. They weren’t at a tea table in London. And now Jack’s voice cracked at every show, but he didn’t mind because Leo had been right—strong things have cracks in them. 

_ I want you to know how much I care for you _ . But the truth was that Leo did know, because Jack had already told him in so many ways. 

Peter swept back into the room humming to himself and shaking his iced coffee like a maraca. Leo and Jack stepped back from each other, reopening the vastness that had defined the space between them for so long now. Across it, they exchanged amused glances and almost imperceptible head shakes. It felt bearable and then, normal. 

Peter smiled and gave his coffee another shake. “All caught up?” 

“Yeah, it was good to see you both,” said Jack, but he was only looking at Leo. “I’m glad you’re doing well.” 

He wished Peter wasn’t there. Jack knew what would happen after this—Leo and Anna would have a small wedding on a beach somewhere. Jack wouldn’t be invited, but he would spot the pictures in a magazine in the grocery store checkout line and leaf through it with his elbows on his shopping cart, telling himself he needed to hide his face from a group of teenage girls, but lingering over the photos long after they passed. And seeing Leo smiling on the beach in a fitted tuxedo beside Anna with her long blonde hair and long white veil would feel almost like being there, only the hurt would be muted. But the joy, and the relief that came with it, would be muted too, as he stared at frozen pictures from a moment he couldn’t be a part of. This was it—standing before Leo in that studio was the closest he would get to that beach, so he didn’t care that it was rude not to look at Peter. He looked at Leo—bright, shining Leo—until they’d both been waiting too long, and Peter shook his godforsaken coffee again. 

Leo cleared his throat and took another step backward toward the recording booth. “You too,” he said, letting his eyes—so blue and so impossibly the same—flash toward Jack. “I’m glad you’re happy.”

Jack let Leo speak it into existence.  _ I’m happy _ , he repeated to himself. 

And so it was. 

Jack tried to sleep on the flight, but he couldn’t keep his eyes off the window. Even when there was nothing to see but black, the knowledge of an ocean below kept his nose pressed to the glass. He’d been looking forward to the photoshoot on the Cliffs of Moher for weeks, but he also liked the feeling of suspension he got from flying over the Atlantic. He wasn’t home but he wasn’t away yet. He wasn’t with Leo but he hadn’t fully left him behind. Stepping off the plane felt like the end of something, but the flight was a red-eye, so the dawn painted the tarmac golden. 

Tess, Luna, and Olivia met him at Shannon airport. They each held a corner of a cardboard sign that read “ _ Taylor _ ” in looping handwriting that Jack recognized as his sister’s. He hugged them all at once and took in their sweet smelling perfumes, their soft hair, their strong limbs wrapped around his shoulders. As soon as he pulled away, Tess started brushing back his curls with a gloved hand, while Luna read aloud from a color-coded schedule on her phone. Olivia folded the sign under her arm and put the other around Jack’s waist. 

“How are you feeling?” she asked softly, as they all made their way to the car. Jack had texted Olivia about running into Leo at the studio. He had cried to her on the phone, but now the tears didn’t come. When they got outside the airport and the wind raced into his eyes and ears and mouth and sent his hair flying, Jack’s mind was already on the cliffside. He glanced down at the edge of his long coat dancing with the air and imagined pale blue tulle in its place. 

“Happy,” he told his sister.

And he didn’t have to speak it into existence because it already was.


End file.
